Latest UK Episode Discussion (2006-2017 Seasons)

[Red Ranger 1]

Alf's episode count this week: Five! Roo was also in all five.John was only in one, although he was credited on Thursday for no appearance.

It's a shame Kat didn't get the job because it would probably have suited her.Instead we get more angsting, more Ash throwing his weight around and a pat ending.Talking of which, Chris and Brody, where I admit I haven't really liked Chris much.I got the impression that Chris started this whole feud because he was frustrated at Andy getting away with killing Hannah and needed someone to take it out on, but that may be me reading more into it than was meant to be there.Meanwhile, Evelyn and Mason started off being kind of cute and I'm not against "friends with benefits" in principle but the rules did seem... kind of cold, especially the "No feelings" thing which doesn't sound especially friendly.I was surprised if not displeased that Olivia quickly forgave Tabitha but not Hunter, although it's frustrating that the show continues to make out that Tabitha is the reason for their troubles (when that was Hunter) and is having her go off the deep end to make him look good.Except when we're only a month or two on from him stabbing a guy, telling lies, getting hold of school passwords and smirking at the camera doesn't really cut it.Lovely bit of interaction between Olivia and VJ after the exam ("Why does everyone keep acting like that's a lot?!"), which reminds me I might have actually liked Olivia if they hadn't stuck her with Hunter.

But never mind that because it's Olympic Cliffhanger week.Alf continues to be rather insensitive and the scary thing is Roo's right, this is the more mellow version of him.Yet I still cheered when Duncan finally snapped and told him where to go, he's been pushing his way into a situation he doesn't understand for far too long.Australian soaps have a longish history of treating new technology as if it works the same way as the old stuff, so in the 21st century equivalent of finding a discarded letter Zac's e-mail magically pops up in front of Leah because...e-mails do that, right?Right?Interesting that Mason is the one most willing to be friendly towards Justin, it was telling back when Justin first confessed that he didn't say anything.But frustrating that, despite coming from the opposite end of the law, Justin handles thing the same way Brax would, going off half-cocked and trying to do a deal with Spike behind the police's back.(Spike's real name is Kevin according to the credits, by the way.And, with John Adam finally getting a credit, we find out that, wonderfully, Decker's first name is Atticus.)Incidentally, the guy playing the comedy storage department worker popped up last year as a guy trying to buy Charlotte's car (and was also in Janet King Season 2).That whole plot thread was a bit weird really, Justin and Phoebe say the city's a long way away and take three episodes to get there, but it's usually just up the road and they get back pretty quickly.Interesting detail about Tori having a different birthday to the one she was born with, I was wondering about that.

[Brian]

Well we've got back the pairs I've been missing. Mason/Evie's "friends with benefits" is never going to work, not with all those rules. I didn't know they did that in Australia. Already Evie is questioning whether it will work on the weekend away and Brodie doesn't think it will. Were they going to share a room in the hotel tonight - if they get there? They'll probably fall in love within 2 weeks, which will be great, as they go well together and can support each other in their uni studies.

Interesting scenes with Billie/VJ - in the diner with Leah being called "grandma" and in their house before VJ goes for his HSC. No pen or calculator?? great student he is! But all that makes it worse when the truth does come out. The longer Billie (or Phoebe) leaves it, the harder it's going to be for VJ and Leah. Perhaps she is waiting until after his HSC - so perhaps next week or after recovery from the plane crash???

Still feel sorry for Matt. What does he do all day - has he stopped working at the garage?  Pity they didn't take him on the plane trip as well. He's just a loose cannon at the moment - no storyline at all.

Will Tori and Nate end up together? Not a good idea if she is his boss and they work together. But they both seem to have a lot of time off. Can't see where Nate's character is going either.  Have we lost Kat - didn't see her go? Tabitha(?} is a real cow - hope she gets her comeuppance soon.

Still a great show . Lots of interest! 

[Psychic Wombat]

Maybe in a cruel twist of fate Nate gets it in the crash? I agree with Brian his character does seem to be lacking direction now.

[atrus]

On 16/09/2016 at 11:50 PM, Red Ranger 1 said:

Okay, new plan: I'm going to post my musings at the end of each week and try not to get dragged into any debates.Or get too vitriolic.Or write too many essays.

Good to have you back. For my part I'm going to try to post at least once a week, rather than once every ten days or so as I seem to have been doing lately. No guarantees on the essay front, though.

For want of any better ideas, I'm going to start with Evie. Have we ever heard about her wanting to be a teacher before last Monday, never mind starting teacher training? Because if so, I don't remember it. Anyhow, I spent most of the fortnight wishing Zac, Matt, Alf and everyone else would let her alone to have a few drinks/a bit of fun. God knows she needs it. I understand these things aren't a permanent or catch-all solution to grief, but in moderation they probably do help people cope. Alf in particular annoyed me; fair enough mentioning once that she woke him up, perhaps, but under the circumstances he could have cut her a bit of slack by leaving it at that, rather than pushing the point repeatedly. Or, hey, just not mentioned it at all unless it became a regular problem. Evie did overstep the mark by saying she didn't care about Ailsa (which is tantamount to sacrilege in H&A) but at least she had the good grace to apologise pretty promptly for the outburst. I find myself not minding the Evie/Mason FWB-ship except for the fact that it's probably way too soon after Josh.

Alf isn't coming across at all well in the Duncan storyline either, having gone from disliking Duncan's ex-wife to the extent that he thought it worth mentioning on their wedding day to becoming her number one cheerleader - which strongly suggests that his real issue is and always has been Duncan himself. In fairness, their relationship was always pretty fraught and so in that sense it's reasonable continuity, but the problem is that Duncan himself seems infinitely more reasonable than his teenage self - whereas Alf is the one behaving like a child. Regardless of his views on the child support situation, it's certainly not his place to interfere - he claims to be doing Duncan a favour in sending the money, and yet can barely utter a civil word in his direction, which again suggests to me that he did it out of spite rather than anything else.

I'm glad Kat packed in her job; as others have already said, her position is no longer really tenable given all her monumental balls-ups and abuses of power over the last few months, and at least she had the integrity to realise that and quit while she was ahead. The fact that Superintendent Stern seems to be going around telling prospective employers that she's not to be trusted also seems to imply that she isn't going to be able to waltz back into the police job either if she changes her mind, so hopefully this is the start of a new, more nuanced direction to her character. I'm really rather happy for her not to remain in a relationship with Ash, but the problem is that if she doesn't, the writers will no doubt be glancing around the room nervously to try and work out who they will pair her with - and I don't really see a huge number of viable alternatives at present.

I have two major problems with the Tabitha situation: firstly, as has already been mentioned, she's being made out to be the root of all Hunter and Olivia's woes, when actually Hunter was behaving like a massive tool for weeks beforehand (and arguably for months before that). My second problem is that I'm getting unsettling 'unhinged lesbian' vibes from her, and I worry that H&A is reverting to form in only including gay characters (if she is indeed gay) where they have sinister ulterior motives or creepy obsessions with a regular. We saw this with Spencer's cyberstalker not all that long ago, and so I sincerely hope we're not getting it again. That said, I still have my eye on Brody as a potential closet-emerger; he hasn't shown much sign of attraction to anyone yet - once upon a time the surest sign of a gay character on TV - and his comment about friends with benefits never working between a man and a woman seemed curiously pointed. But perhaps it's just wishful thinking on my part that we'll finally see some diversity in this regard.

What else? Well, it was nice to see the show taking a slightly-less-po-faced-than-usual approach to HSCs, with both Hunter and VJ apparently totally ignorant of the requirements of them, and not especially worried about it either. I was less pleased to find VJ explicitly calling Hunter his best mate. I suppose it was only a matter of time before all Hunter's prior sins were forgotten, but I felt like 'stepbrother' might have been a way of avoiding the usual cliché of same-aged teens on the show having to be established as best friends.

For fellow Neighbours viewers, I thought it worth noting that we got a blast of both Honga and Madge Wilkins in what proved an excellent week for the invisible cast of Australian soap. Happily, the mention of "snakes and chips" as the H&A teens' snack of choice wasn't indicative of an impending soapie crossover, given the recent reptilian goings-on in Ramsay Street. And speaking of chips, while I'm sure it's true that Madge Wilkins has never been established as a chip shop owner, I thought it was a nice detail that was unlikely to flat-out contradict anything we already knew about her. Perhaps one day someone will publish a full biography.

And onto Spike's return, Justin's adventures with Phoebe, and the mid-year cliffhanger. Despite my reservations about this kind of storyline being deployed with increasing frequency, I thought most of it worked reasonably well, and I include the Justin/Phoebe chemistry in that. I much prefer Phoebe when she's not taking things so seriously, and her most recent relationships haven't been particularly conducive to that - whereas this one seems to have a little more spice to it. (How long that will last is anybody's guess.) The plane scenes were all very nicely shot and almost feature film-esque. I like pretty much all of the characters on the plane, with the possible exception of Nate and sometimes Evie, so I'm hoping most of them come out of the trip unscathed, even if they don't quite make it to the winery as the terrible cynic in me is beginning to suspect.

[H&Alover]

Well if Alf's continued slagging off of Duncan wasn't a clue to 'something bad happening' I don't know what is. I think Alf was more concerned about Brian than Caroline.  I did notice in the trailer that Alf defended Duncan when he was asked why they were off the planned flight path by saying he would have been looking for a safe place to land.

It looked to me that Justin/jack had tipped off the cops reason no.2 to keep Tori away from the beach, I would say it was very remiss of Decker and co to ignore Justin's worry about Spike's comment about saying goodbye to your sister, but of course he'd already done the deed and at that moment no-one knew what it was.  No offence to all Kevins  out there but it isn't a very tough name for a gang member is it?  I'm guessing he - Spike - was unaware there would be so many people on the plane. Have to say Justin was on the boil realising so quickly what the plot was.  Of all of them it appeared Mason did have kind of feeling something wasn't right with Justin ringing them all.

Just how is Tabby going to sort Olivia's mistake with missing the last question of her exam paper and from what I saw when she was filming Zac typing in the password or whatever he was doing it looked like she had the front of her phone facing her or did I get that wrong? Whatever it is taking friendship a touch too far imo.

I don't know if I've mentioned it before so apologies if I have, but it's really not a good idea for Leah to join the bay folk when they go on trips/outings something bad always happens.

On ‎23‎/‎09‎/‎2016 at 4:25 PM, Dan F said:

Yes it's Jack Lee, Harris was his mum's maiden name.

If you want a miniscule spoiler (it's first mention comes next week in the UK) then you'll also find Brody's real name in his character profile on our site. Of course everything else in the profile is non-spoiler.

I think I prefer Brody!

 

[c120701]

I agree about Brody. I'm hoping he doesn't revert back to his previous name.

[Slade]

The preview on Thursday very much seemed geared towards something major happening even without knowing what was going to happen beforehand.

Once again loving Tabitha's manipulation of Olivia.  She's so conniving.  The scene before Olivia found out the truth at the school where she was giving Hunter the evils and Zac said "I got frostbite just looking at that" was great.  I love how (as expected) Tabitha's plan backfired and Hunter convinced Olivia that she was lying but afterwards Tabitha put on the water works and Olivia still forgave her because of the sisterhood thing.  The funniest thing about this is that Hunter is actual right about her but he's being made out to be in the wrong.    I'm loving the fact that Tabitha has loads of photos of herself and Olivia in her locker (they've obviously been spending a lot of time together).  She's completely and totally obsessed.  I'm assuming she's going to use Zac's password to hack into the computer to alter Olivia's test exam results, assuming that Olivia performed badly which presumably she did given her reaction after she finished and the fact that she lost a fifth of her total mark without realising.  Really looking forward to seeing how this one pans out.  I'm confused though at the Summer Bay house they said the exam was a trial but Zac suggested to VJ and Hunter that it was worth 20%.

It's funny seeing Duncan and Leah talking (I think in one of the other episodes last week) as he looks around the same age as her which was even funnier as when Roo, Leah and Irene were talking about Leah being a hot mum she said one of the customers didn't think she was old enough to be a mum.  I'm sure that customer was just flattering her though.

Whilst I found Alf's line funny again - "Do I look like the sort of bloke who would enjoy poncing around a flamin winery".  This time I wasn't on his side because it did seem to be that Duncan was genuinely trying to make an effort inviting him.  Still undecided about the storyline with his ex wife as we don't have enough information although I can understand Alf giving her money even though it was behind Duncan's back.

Marilyn annoyed me when she was offering Nate 'advice' again.  I personally don't think he should have turned up to join Tori and the others - Although they had to show him riding in on his bike.  I think he should back off, leave it for a while and lay off being friends with her.  If it was me I would although I wouldn't have declared my feelings like he did to someone I work with anyway.  Although given the preview he might live to regret it.

Found it funny the way the music was playing in the background when it was a race against time for Justin to save Tori and the others.  Kind of reminded me when Brax did his Baywatch impressions.  Like the bus crash a while back I guess it would be an opportunity to get rid of the dead beat.  The only one that springs to mind though is Mason.

[H&Alover]

19 hours ago, c120701 said:

I agree about Brody. I'm hoping he doesn't revert back to his previous name.

No mention of the other two, but I guess the same applies to them which made a liar out of me saying people in WP didn't change their Christian names. 

You know what teenage girls are like Slade when in a new friendship taking selfies all the time, the same when a girl and boy become an item can't keep their hands off each other and are joined at the lips.  Irene also has doubts about Tabby but hasn't been so vocal as Hunter.  I'm wondering if maybe Tabby may use what she has done/will be doing to force Olivia to keep on being friends with her.

I think the percentage of the trial result counts towards the real thing and 20% is not to be dismissed.

Nate does have a mind of his own so didn't have to take Marilyn's advice, just had a thought how is the hospital managing to run seeing as neither  Nate and Tori are there!

[atrus]

And Alf's orange trousers are out!

Not much else to say about this episode really, other than that it was quite a spectacle. Whoever said Lost came to mind had it right, and on a daily soap budget that's quite an achievement. I was trying to work out how much of it was CGI - but if any of it was, it wasn't noticeable. (At least by me.) My only slight criticism is that I'm surprised more people weren't seriously injured than they were, given the state of the plane wreckage. Not that I wanted them to be injured - it just felt a bit convenient that they weren't. (At least Lost had a justification.)

I'm glad Alf got the emotional scenes he did, as it proved that all his antipathy towards Duncan was just stubborn bluster. Zac's scenes with VJ were nice too.

[Dan F]

18 minutes ago, atrus said:

I was trying to work out how much of it was CGI - but if any of it was, it wasn't noticeable. (At least by me.)

The only CGI was the shot of the crash itself (top left in this pic). Though there's a little bit more of it tomorrow which I won't spoil.