beau_t

Do Bobby and Greg make up before she dies? I liked Michael's chat with Sophie. His promise to step up and give her his full support from now on was heartfelt and very touching, and something that will continue to be focussed on, most notably when Michael helps Sophie give birth. Pippa wanting to keep Michael away from Sophie while she rests was reminiscent of her wanting to keep Sally away after she found out about David's death. In both cases she was wrong. It is also reminiscent of Pippa trying to keep Michael away from Sally after she returns from running away in 1995, which is a major factor in their marraige breakdown - that Pippa overrides all Michael's decisions in the family. The seeds of this are already starting to show. Julia/Meg/Blake storyline is going ahead nicely. Julia is asking a lot of Alf, getting him to tell Blake to stay away but without explaining to Blake the reasons why. It is little wonder Blake doesn't understand. I wouldn't. Julia comes across as very harsh and protective, but then there's always a heartbreaking reason behind it (like the conversation where she said Meg could never have a proper relationship because it wouldn't be fair on Blake). It's just a very sad situation all round.

I see the end of the "black" opening credits as a good place to call the real Early Years quits. Though with the show still going in 2013, I would realistically say up to the late 90s is the early years, maybe Pippa's departure.

I take your point. In essence, they have been proved right in their attempt to keep Sophie and David apart, because they had (we assume) unprotected sex. However, I wrote the above from Sophie's point of view. To her, Pippa and Michael have done nothing but consistently let her down over the past year, so it's no wonder she ran away. Well, you could argue the opposite point of view.Certainly, it's hard to see what good Pippa and Michael did by opposing the relationship because that's what they did and this is what happened as a result.If they'd accepted the relationship rather than effectively driving David out of town and contributing to the chain of events that led to his death, then Sophie's baby could have two parents and she wouldn't be facing up to life as a teenage and single mother and being scared of having the baby taken away because people think she can't cope.Taking it one step further, if Michael and Pippa hadn't been so determined to keep them apart, then their relationship may have progressed at a slower rate, rather than them possibly rushing into sleeping together out of a need to prove the reality of their feelings, and Sophie might not even be pregnant.Alternately, if David was still dead and Sophie was still pregnant but Michael and Pippa had supported her, then she wouldn't be left feeling that they don't care about her opinions and feelings and just want to force her to do what they think is best "for her own good" and she wouldn't have run away. You could also argue if Tom hadn't lost his job in the city none of the characters would be in the situation they are now, but you have to reel it in at some point "What ifs" are not the same as "what actually happened", and the fact is that Pippa and especially Michael were worried about what Sophie and David would get up to. And essentially that's exactly what they did get up to. Anything else is conjecture so from looking at the facts alone Pippa and Michael were justified in their worries. I do agree that if they had reacted differently to David and Sophie's relationship things may have developped differently and they may not even have slept together but that's a "what if" scenario. As you'll see from my bigger post above I'm no fan of the way Pippa and Michael have treated Sophie over the past year and I absolutely think they handled the David/Sophie situation wrongly, but the one aspect that I do agree with Old H&A Fan on is that their worries, if not their actions, were justified.

I take your point. In essence, they have been proved right in their attempt to keep Sophie and David apart, because they had (we assume) unprotected sex. However, I wrote the above from Sophie's point of view. To her, Pippa and Michael have done nothing but consistently let her down over the past year, so it's no wonder she ran away.

Yeah I'm a bit unsure of this too. i THINK the reason was something to do with subsidance (hence the cracks). It would have been expensive for Fisher to pay someone to fix the problem. Cheaper for him to sell the house to a builder who would be able to fix the problem himself, while Fisher could get himself a nice new house. Something like that. Although IIRC after the Meg/Julia Bowman storyline finishes we no longer see the house and never find out what happens to it. A great week of episodes I thought. Lots of humour. Loved Adam calling Fisher "baby" and later Blake trying to call him Don. Loved Ailsa's pretend jealousy of Alf and Julia, we should see her fun side more often. Hearing Marilyn smash something and scream off-sreen while Ailsa was on the phone in the diner was good too. And Greg and Sam have had some nice father/son scenes at the boatshed and while his video proposal is a bit cheesy, it's ultimately sweet that Greg and Sam are asking Bobby to marry both of them. Good introduction to Meg and Julia, I am more interested in their mother/daughter relationship at present than I am in Blake and Meg's budding romance. Felt a bit sorry for Pippa crying about Sophie, though when she said she tried her best, I am not sure that's true. She treated Sophie like dirt for weeks when Tracy was around despite Sophie constantly trying to tell them what she was like, then when the truth finally came out Sophie barely got an apology (something along the lines of "we all make mistakes, Soph."). She was then banned from seeing her new boyfriend and forced to leave town as part of a deal Pippa and Michael came up with. They then kept his death from her and she didn't even get to go to his funeral and since then (from her point of view) they have been forcing her to move on instead of letting her grieve in her own way. Is it really any wonder that Sophie doesn't trust that Pippa will be there for her and not take the baby away?! Pregnant teeagers don't run away for the good of their health, they do it out of desperation and Pippa and Michael need to realise how insecure they have made Sophie feel over the past year. That's not to say I don't believe they love Sophie very much - of course they do and I feel very sorry for them. It's heart breaking for any parent to go to bed at night and not know where their child is or if they are safe. The final scene of the week with Pippa coming to terms that the "phone's not going to ring" (reminiscent of Tom's death), only for Sophie to phone them the second they leave the house - a Home and Away cliffhanger at its best.

Shhhhhhhhh! *whispers* over the years many, many more of Alf's childhood sweethearts will be revealed or talked about, none of which make much sense date-wise (especially when trying to piece it all together). We're not supposed to notice!

Yeah they haven't done much for Frank's likeability by bringing him back. Let's hope he redeems himself before he leaves. I have always remembered Ailsa storming into Pippa's house and giving him the what for.

I'd say it definately is. A very good looking guy. *jealous* lol

IIRC he thought Shauna was gay. I thought his 1999 return was a lot of fun, with a mixture of comedy and serious moments. His rivalry with Sally and Vinnie was funny although I thought he was way too nasty to Sally, considering she really stuck up for him in 1993/4 when nobody else would bother with him.

I can only guess Frank and Roo's theme was more memorable and Mike Perjanik wanted to use it again as fans would remember it (it was used throughout 1988 up until Frank's departure in 1989, whereas Frank and Bobby's song was only used for a short period).

1054 (Week 29) - Marilyn's departure This happens much earlier in the year than I expected/hoped!

The way I remember it, she was the one who apologised and wanted to stay, but Alf was furious about her ruining his development plans and told her to get out of town. A short while later he and Ailsa decided to give her another chance. He raced to the sea plane to try and talk to her before she left but it had already taken off by the time he got there (cue recycled footage of the seaplane taking off from that time with Angel). Alf was too late and Quinn left wrongly believing that Alf didn't want her. Interesting.Not how I remember it at all and I'm wondering if I got mixed up with the first time she was going to leave.I remember Alf finding her by the bus stop with her bags packed all set to leave, after he'd found out what she'd done, and sort of saying "I know why you did it, we can get past this" and her saying it was too late for them to be a family.I don't recall her even apologising, she went after Steven and told him she'd changed her mind but he refused to back out of making the report public because it affected people he cared about, then I don't think we saw her again until Alf tracked her down.I do find that I either remember things perfectly or don't remember them at all but I do also get these things mixed up sometimes.Maybe in four years time it'll turn up on 7Two and we'll find out... Beau's the closest - Alf found Quinn when he worked it out and she did regret her actions. She didn't have her bags packed at the bus stop though, you may be thinking of her first episode when she was all set to leave and he went after her when he clicked who she could be. She said she was truly sorry, after explaining her initial reasons for coming to the bay, but he simply said "It's a bit late for sorry" and left - there wasn't any talk of her staying or leaving town etc. and that was the last time they spoke. She went to Steven to say goodbye, and it then played out as Beau recalls with Alf and Ailsa talking and agreeing they should give her a second chance. But by that point Quinn was on the seaplane (an almost replica of the Angel scene but not actually recycled footage on this occasion ) I knew I was right as I had this episode on tape for years, I had recorded a movie off TV and later used the remaining space on the tape to record H&A one day when I knew I was going to be out, and it happened to be this episode. So over the years I watched it quite a lot. It definately seems like they intended to revisit the Quinn storyline (like with Travis and Tiegan, who were brought in as guest characters, written out after their stint finished, then subsequently brought back as main characters due to their popularity). Maybe the actress decided not to come back, or there was a change in writers and the new writer wasn't interested in the story... it was very strange for H&A back then to introduce a story like that and then never tie it up.

The way I remember it, she was the one who apologised and wanted to stay, but Alf was furious about her ruining his development plans and told her to get out of town. A short while later he and Ailsa decided to give her another chance. He raced to the sea plane to try and talk to her before she left but it had already taken off by the time he got there (cue recycled footage of the seaplane taking off from that time with Angel). Alf was too late and Quinn left wrongly believing that Alf didn't want her.

For a tiny seaside town there were certainly a lot of things lying around that nobody had noticed before until Shannon came along!

I don't remember anything about a grenade, but I do recall a scene from around that 95/96 era of someone's boat hitting a sea- mine (like the nasty horrible, scary things below) and causing an explosion out on the water. I'm sure Shannon and Alf were involved. I was only five/ six years old at the time, so my memory may be a bit dodgy, but I have such clear recall of the scene and asking my parents questions about what the thing in the water was. Yeah, as I mentioned in my post they discovered sea mines, but the storyline with the explosion that blinded Alex, was a seperate storyline involving a grenade at an old army base. On seperate occasions they also discovered a plane wreck with skeletons (I think they actually turned out to be ancestors of Simon Broadhurst who left with Angel), and previously Shannon had found a dead body in the bush!

Actually I tend to think that Chloe's dad shooting dead and killing that guy was unnecessary and added nothing to the story, but my memory of that part of the story is patchy, I may change my mind when I see it again.

I remember this! Alex along with Shannon (who had a habit of discovering things everyone else in Summer Bay seemed to miss, like skeletons, plane wrecks, burned bodies and mines under the sea) stumbled across an old war bunker which contained lots of abandoned military paraphernalia, unaware that Sam was spying on them. They discovered a crete of unexploded grenades. After they left to summon someone, Sam entered one of the storage sheds and accidentally set one of them off. Alex returned and got Sam and his friend to run away, at which point the grenade exploded and blinded Alex (temporarily). The explosion was heard all throughout Summer Bay. After regaining his sight, Alex started behaving strangely as a result of his head injury, doing things like moving the furniture around Pippa's house and leaving baby Shane unattended in the bath (resulting in Angel kicking him out of the house). He also started perving over other girls. Later he would have no memory of the things he did. He was on the beach painting the night Chloe was attacked. The next morning Shannon found Chloe's bracelet in Alex's caravan. For a while Alex was the prime suspect in Chloe's attack. Soon after, his thinking got back to normal and eventually his name was cleared when another man was (wrongly) arrested and imprisoned for Chloe's attack. Sadly Alex later revealed that he had heard someone screaming that night on the beach but thought it was seagulls

I believe this is the episode following Chloe finding traps all over the Beach House (set up from within prison by Brad). A police psychologist comes round to talk to Chloe about the ordeal, but quickly begins saying strange things to Chloe to make it seem like Chloe is responsible for what has happened to her. After she leaves Irene phones the police and finds out that they never sent a psychologist round. The woman then returns and runs into the house and tries to attack Chloe. I can't remember the character or actress' name but I am sure she has played other roles on the show. In fact I think she may have been the counseller that Sally went to see in early 2008 when she started obsessing over Milco again.

There is an interview with Judy on youtube (quite a recent one) where she says that towards the end of her time in H&A she didn't especially want big storylines because it would take time away from her writing. She was happy just to serve coffee in the Diner because it meant she could spend more time in her dressing room writing. Considering that 1999 and 2000 were quite heavy years for Ailsa storyline-wise, this is probably what pushed her to leave. She also said the writers would try to involve her in decisions about what to do with Ailsa's character but she always told them "no just you come up with something" because she was more interested in writing her novels by that point! I do think the mental breakdowns provided good continuity, especially after the 2nd Diner hold-up in 1998(?) where she started to go the same way she did in 1995, very nearly managed to pull herself out of it, but then the road rage storyline happened immediately after and pushed her right over the edge again. I think they even referenced the 1995 breakdown with Ailsa or possibly Alf saying "it's happening again." As for the storyline where Ailsa comes out a coma and becomes extremely bitter and resentful towards Alf, I found this storyline a bit too dark and depressing. Even though she was one of my favourite characters I just thought it was too much for she and Alf to go through after everything else. It was just a bit uncalled for. I also thought it was a very self-contained storyline, the rest of the town didn't really seem to care that Ailsa was having her life support turned off, nor did they especially care when she was a wheelchair bound mad woman. And then after weeks of this dank depressing storyline Ailsa suddenly snaps out of it with no real resolution. Having said that, Judy Nunn was great during this story. Isn't there an episode where we hear inside Ailsa's head and all the bitter twisted things she is thinking about Alf while sitting there silently

Great idea - yeah by H&A Law standards he could (just) be out of jail by now.

I very much like Michael, even when he's in the wrong. I think he is a good guy who's heart is always in the right place, even when he does go about things in a very questionable manner sometimes. He's much more realistic than Tom in my opinion, who was like someone out of the Brady Bunch: "Now kids what lesson have we learned today?". Micheal's more real because he's flawed. It's much more interesting to watch someone like Michael who tries to get it right and fails, than Tom who was just Mr Perfect Father Figure. But Tom very much suited the original premise of the show. Anyway I don't want to turn this into a Tom v Michael thread because as Blaxland 89 says, they are their own characters. It is about time Michael had his own thread!

Exactly

The age gap storyline was both controversial and fun when Marilyn and Donald got together in the 90s. How about they switch it and have Marilyn date a much younger guy such as Dexter - he had a crush on her when she first arrived and they both have quirky personalities.

If you could link to any youtube clips that would help...

Eskimo Joe was used a lot around that point.