Latest UK Episode Discussion (2006-2017 Seasons)

[Brian]

Hi folks, I'm back.

Just to say it was really stupid of Kyle to go away again and leave Phoebe by herself in the house with no one looking out for her.

Interesting to see how the Matt/Sasha storyline plays out. I don't think it is the end for them - they can make it work.

I wish Andy would leave Hannah alone . She would be much better taking Nate's advice.

Good storylines all round - still one of the best soaps going.

[Red Ranger 1]

I’m not too keen on Ricky’s attitude towards Ash, although he is overdoing the “looking after her” thing by acting like her bodyguard and keeping people away from her. Ash isn’t to blame for Brax’s dumb decisions and I’m glad Kyle doesn’t seem to blame him. I did like Denny looking out for Ricky and working with Ash. It felt like an age before we caught up with Phoebe but Ryan is believably unstable. (Did I mention the actor was one of the main characters in that disastrous Australian K9 series? Pause for people to wonder what I’m talking about…) How did she put that dress on? She can’t have done it while tied up, did Ryan stay and watch or did he actually untie her and leave the room and she meekly got back in her restraints afterwards?

Another “Yay, Pink Ted!” moment aside, the Maddy/Oscar stuff was weird, with both of them lurching from one extreme to the other. Oscar seems to have a very low opinion of Maddy, I don’t really think she’s the sort to get bored of people quickly and he came across a bit needy and insecure, and the whole thing’s feeling a bit co-dependent. I’m hoping that, like Denny said, the oddness is just down to the cancer, this probably wasn’t the best time to try and start a relationship when they’re unable to do what couples do. Maddy’s decision to hide going back to school from Oscar was very strange and, while it was nice to see her happy again, I get the feeling that, like Spencer, she’s setting herself up for a fall: Some people might cheer at the sight of her in a short school uniform again but I don’t think Oscar will be one of them.

[CaptainHulk]

Is it wrong that I find hard to sympathise when anybody gets kidnapped on this show as it happens so often these days?

[Red Ranger 1]

It was nice to see that, after a bit of a wobble recently, Kat proves herself to be a competent police officer by working out that Ryan's been spying on Phoebe.(The on-screen realisation doesn't quite fit the storyline though, since Ryan seems to be getting pictures but no sound, so how did he know what Phoebe was saying?Are we back to lip reading again?)I was worried that they were going to write Ash as a substitute Brax but he managed to stay suitably distinct, as well as being a calm and intelligent presence.I can't quite tell if Phoebe's singing was meant to be bad or not, she murdered the third line on every verse and didn't do much better with the fourth.(Trouble hitting the high notes?)Anyway, it was a nice touch that she'd basically escaped on her own when Kyle and co got there, instead of sitting around waiting to be rescued.Ryan's fate, being arrested and packed off screen, was a bit perfunctory, with no real motivation for the character, but I guess it's not about him.Hopefully it's also not about weeks of Kyle trying to get Phoebe to go back to music either.Ash and Denny have bristling chemistry even when he's on the phone and she isn't in the episode.Kat refers to herself as Kat for the first time (after weeks of it only appearing in spoilers and magazine cast lists), but I can't get excited about her date with Nate.

I'm trying my best to contain my annoyance at the Maddy/Oscar storyline.It was good to see Maddy happy and looking good back in uniform at the start but then it was downhill all the way from there. For a start, Maddy's reasons for keeping the fact she's going back to school from Oscar seemed spurious at best, despite Marilyn and Roo's gushing about how romantic it is.Then we have Oscar acting as though he's almost looking forward to Maddy breaking up with him.For real?He spends the best part of a year dreaming of going out with her and now he is he's decided he doesn't want her after all?(I'm hoping it was just him trying to find the good side in what he believed to be inevitable and settling for just being friends, because if not that's just ridiculous.)Then Oscar holds up Andy and Hannah as what he should aspire to be and decides that because they're not cavorting on the sofa in full view of the rest of the household, he and Maddy aren't really a couple.(Again, maybe it's because she's got cancer and chemo and isn't up to all the public displays of affection, and when she tries he tells her to go and rest?Which I guess underlines the fact that it's the wrong time to start things.)Then we get Oscar walking along practising a break-up speech, which felt like it was meant to be funny but really wasn't.And finally we get Maddy using the L word again, which rings so false I'm left wondering if we're meant to think she's lying.Probably not but I wish the show allowed people to just date without feeling the need to stipulate that they're "in love" after about a week.

[Slade]

I was actually enjoying Ryan's handiwork and was hoping maybe the stalking went on for perhaps another episode. It's good to have these every once in a while and I haven't enjoyed that as much as well since Jamie. I'm assuming Ryan hacked the Braxtons, Palmers or somebody else's WiFi on that street to feed the content to his phone.

The Andy/Hannah scenes made me smile. And I even enjoyed their scenes with Oscar and with also Nate (who looks like he's going to pull another attractive female).

I have to be honest and say Oscar's change in attitude towards Maddy has really surprised me. I mentioned in another thread that he'd wised up to the fact that he was being played. But the way he was today was almost like he decided to end things because he actually doesn't love her anymore. And from his perspective the whole thing is coming across as the grass is greener on the other side. He's been head over heels for what feels like an age, he's finally got what he wanted even though he's been suspicious, I would have expected him to continue the relationship whilst airing on the side of caution rather than deciding to end it completely. Even rehearsing his break up lines to use the classic let's be friends excuse feels like a cop out on his part. If he wants to break up with her and he believes she's going to finish with him anyway why bother breaking up with her? Unless he genuinley wants to do the right thing and not lead her on, surely in terms of damage limitation it would be easier to just let her end the relationship (if he thinks it's imminent anyway) then he doesn't risk hurting her which is why I assume he's using the that particular excuse in the first place. I said that I don't believe Maddy is in love with him but the way her eyes lit up today it didn't seem like that. Almost feels like the writers have reversed the emotions between the two of them so Maddy is now infatuated and Oscar isn't.

[Brian]

I can't believe how selfish Brax has been. He went off to find Dean, even though Ricky pleaded with him not to go. And he the great family man, now leaving his partner and child-to-be for 20 years!!! Couldn't he at least made sure the Braxton house was secure, so that someone could not easily break in. Now the Braxton men in that house are reduced from 4 to 1 and Kyle is only a half-brother.

Well done PC Kat for tracking down Ryan's whereabouts, but why did Kyle have to bring her back to his place. Surely that is the last place she would want to be relaxing in! What happened to that "place of their own" that Kyle promised her weeks ago? I'm surprised that Phoebe is still around. How much more aggro will she put up with?

What's going to happen with Josh and Evie tomorrow, I wonder/

[atrus]

Just finished Monday and Tuesday's episodes, but wasn't really feeling it. Perhaps it was the continuing adventures of Handy that put me off; or the yawn-worthy new pairing of Kat and Nate; or possibly Ash stepping into Brax's shoes the moment he's out of the picture and throwing his weight around in a bid to 'protect' Ricky, like she wouldn't be a thousand times safer and better off without endless 'protection' from the Braxtons and friends. If I were her I'd be setting myself up in a nice studio apartment and washing my hands of the lot of them.

Is it wrong that I find hard to sympathise when anybody gets kidnapped on this show as it happens so often these days?

No, I totally agree. It's laughable how often we have kidnappings, and this one satisfied several of the oldest tropes in the book - implied sexual motivation, enforced costume change, creepy musical element. I can't fault the acting or the direction; it's all top-notch. But it's more horror movie than teatime soap. Conceptually speaking I just tire of storylines that home in on 'weirdos' for a short-term drama burst, then quickly dispatch them. It wasn't quite as offensive as the Spencer/cyberstalker storyline that aired before Christmas, but it had similar undertones. I know soaps can't be expected to reflect real life in terms of the creeps-to-normals ratio, but even so, H&A does take it to extremes.

Oscar and Maddy were really the best of a bad bunch. I agree that Oscar didn't seem to be as invested in his relationship as he ought to be given his oft-stated feelings, although that could be read as a self-esteem thing, and him thinking he isn't good enough for Maddy so wanting to cut his losses before he gets badly hurt. I don't actually think it's an unsound instinct, because hurt he will get - but I'd like to see them have a few months of happiness before they start dangling their relationship over the coals.

[CaptainHulk]

I can't believe how selfish Brax has been. He went off to find Dean, even though Ricky pleaded with him not to go. And he the great family man, now leaving his partner and child-to-be for 20 years!!! Couldn't he at least made sure the Braxton house was secure, so that someone could not easily break in. Now the Braxton men in that house are reduced from 4 to 1 and Kyle is only a half-brother.

Well he's a Braxton seed if we're gonna get technical.

[Red Ranger 1]

^And technically Casey was a half-brother too, so Brax and Heath were the only full brothers.

Well...that was pretty dreadful really.And it almost managed to pull it off.The episode nicely demonstrated that Oscar was sacrificing too much for Maddy, with his schoolwork suffering and Maddy thoughtlessly asking him to go for a walk when he's in the middle of an assignment.But apparently that's got nothing to do with it and the episode completely lost me with the appalling, bordering on distasteful scene of Oscar looking from Andy and Hannah making out on one side of him and Josh and Evelyn making out on the other side and deciding that's what true love is about.Which doesn't say much for Oscar, and if it's meant to be a heartfelt moral then it doesn't say much for the show, which seems to favour plastic identikit couples who look hot together over quiet sweet affection and a relationship built on friendship and mutual respect.It doesn't help that the episode ends with Evelyn suddenly gaining a desire to lose her V plates in the back of a car.How classy."Yes, kids, true love is screwing on a back seat."It almost feels like the writers had a last minute change of mind:Months building up Maddy and Oscar to break them up before they have a chance to get going, and I hope that it's not so one or both of them can be paired up with someone else on the relationship merry-go-round.It didn't help that Evelyn, who up until a month or two ago wouldn't have spat on Maddy if she was on fire, was the one giving Oscar the last push.Her being nice to Maddy earlier in the episode was probably to show it's not personal, but there's probably still a part of her that's glad not to have her around.There were moments in the episode where I actually hated Oscar but fortunately they got that bit right: Maddy doesn't hate him so I don't.That's the one thing the episode got right, it would have been too easy to have Maddy regress but she continued to show maturity, accepting Oscar's decision and still wanting him as a friend, and sticking at school for her own sake.

My one spark of hope is that Oscar never actually says he doesn't love Maddy, just that "it isn't working".And for the first time, I actually believed here that Maddy loves him, with her conversation with Evelyn.I do think this was the wrong time for them to get together, and I also wonder if it's simply that Oscar built up a fantasy in his head of what it would be like dating Maddy and reality didn't match up.So maybe, when/if she gets better, there's a chance?

Hard to focus on anything else:Hannah and Nate sparked off each other well but weren't really saying anything interesting, the colour run's bubbling away nicely in the background with Spencer trying to rein himself in, Hannah lifting her leg didn't provoke any reaction beyond an eye roll, and Evelyn's transition from frigid to nympho was a bit abrupt and could have done with being in another episode.

[atrus]

Agree with all of the above re Oscar and Maddy, right down to her surprisingly mature reaction. Normally we'd have had a shouting tantrum/uber-mardy routine culminating in Roo getting it in the neck ('And you can stuff your school, I'm never setting foot in there again!), so the fact that she took the news sadly but relatively calmly made me sympathise much more with her plight. It seems the cancer has given her a new perspective on life, which could make for an interesting character development if they're consistent with it in the future. (Although I fully expect us to be firmly back on tantrum territory when she learns of Spencer's fundraising 'surprise', so if they subvert that expectation I'll be doubly impressed) On the other hand, I find the decision to break her and Oscar up so soon to be a completely baffling and dramatically unsatisfying one, to the extent that I'm half-convinced it's only temporary. It certainly feels like a waste of build-up, if nothing else.

And while Maddy stoically refused to let a boy define her life by maintaining her decision to return to school, Evie continues to be defined by her virtual hero-worship of Josh. I can't easily define why these two aren't working for me other than to say that they're not yet well-developed enough in their own rights for me to invest in the relationship.