Latest UK Episode Discussion (2006-2017 Seasons)

[harrietjames]

The bias that @Slade mentions doesn't have to be specifically about certain characters. Viewers have personal biased - Eg Sexism - if a guy did it, you chalk it up as ok due to "boys will be boys" but if a gal did it then they are horrified.

 

I tend to dismiss anything to establish someone as on a redemption path.

Take Billie arrives, she's messed up. She lies about Nate. She becomes an accepted member of the community. She lies to VJ about Luc. As such the VJ lie is a worse lie because she's supposed to be a good person, now.

With the exception that the VJ lie was to give Luc a better life, more than for person gain.

[baywatcher]

That wine the Astoni's were drinking did NOT look nice.

More good interplay between Justin & Willow. Sounds like she has had a rough life.

What IS it with people and cars in Summer Bay??

[H&Alover]

Red/Slade, you're both right we all have our favourite characters and others who aren't, it's always going to be that way.  I like Ben a lot while others don't, Maggie I'm ambivalent about, though others hate her. Most of us went through the stage of disliking Leah when she broke up with Zac and refused to even be civil to him,  and her fall out with Irene, but I'm guessing we were back on her side over Luc and VJ leaving. Didn't we all hate Heath when he first arrived just because he was a River Boy and  the most violent of the Braxton's but he turned his life round and  became oddly a favourite. I don't think any of us liked Pirovac or Johnny Cooper so certainly weren't bothered when they  were despatched, ditto Novak. Others we will never take to however much they change like Red still not liking Hunter whereas I've change my mind about him. To be honest sometimes even our favourites annoy the life out of us - see Leah above and even Irene has been found guilty of that charge. I'm up and down with Ziggy, she can really push things sometimes with her schemes but others she shows her caring side, actually  if a character (any character) was one dimensional  they would be sooo boring.  As you said Slade it is a soap therefore fiction so maybe we shouldn't take it so personally.

I don't think anyone has said because I/we like someone i.e. Billie you have to or vice versa.

Justin was in your face when we first met him, squaring up to Ash, but he won me round, even if he still does do stupid things, but he really cares for his family.

To put it into context Billie made one mistake accusing Nate of sexual assault, OK two if you include her lying about VJ being the father, but that's not a criminal offence. l Mick, allegedly is a serial rapist, so more than one mistake there, again allegedly, & kidnapper - Irene. Ironically Billie not reporting the rape either before or after she realised it was Mick was because of the false accusation she made against Nate, she was scared she wouldn't be believed,  I think she told Nate, Ash and VJ that, so there is your poetic justice - not the rape itself.  Mick we may have liked initially if (a) he hadn't kidnapped Irene  and (b) Billie hadn't realised it had been him who had raped her and who suddenly demanded he have contact with his child. We would have felt sympathy he'd had such a bad childhood  but pleased he'd found his long lost mum and discovered the truth but TPTB decided it wasn't to be that way.

Irene & Mick have slipped quietly away to WA and narry a mention from Maz  that it's going to be busy while she's gone, maybe Roo could put in a few hours? I don't think anyone in the bay would call Mick Saint Mick, I think we, the viewers, saw a the side of him that may have been - see my thoughts above.  He's an intelligent man but has wasted much of his life doing totally bad things when he could have achieved a lot.  Mind you I say man, which he is in years, but not emotionally.  My thoughts as to why Irene has gone with him for a week or was it two - time changed during the episode - is  look after him an opportunity she was denied when he was a baby, not that two weeks will make up for those lost early years.

Indeed it could be argued and has been that Tori was wrong in forcing Kat to tell Ash he was the father but as I posted before the truth would have come out and pretty soon, you couldn't hide an eight week difference in a pregnancy for long. One of the reasons behind it of course was that she and Ash were leaving and Tori felt he ought to know before he left. It has backfired on her of course as he naturally wants to be involved in his child's life and he did a good job as uncle Ash. I can see why Tori wanted to break up now because it'd save her more heartbreak further down the line.  I'm glad Ash didn't give up and while making no promises for what may happen in the future, for now it's Tori he wants to be with and who he loves. Hey who knows she may dump him for someone else as she doesn't want to be looking after some other woman's child!    It all seems to be focusing on Tori being the other woman with a twist but no mention of Robbo being the 'other' man, he has to feel the same as Tori does, as in where does he stand in all this?  Of course  when the truth about Robbo does come out Kat will be without a partner so more responsibilities on Ash. I do get the feeling he was a good guy before he became a bad guy. some of the actions he has shown since being in the bay showed that. Justin & Mason are now in the secret, is it still a secret?  Ash wanting children and Kat not wanting to wasn't the only reason they broke up, wasn't it also because Tori found out they were both using Tori as a confidente a part of it that and the fact that Tori had feelings for Ash and Kat kept telling Ash to stay away from her which he kept ignoring?

Will Robinson (sorry Shepherd) has got things moving, guess STF has more resources than Yabby Creek.  Have to admit Robbo's story was plausible though Kat was unhappy he lied to her - boy she doesn't know the half of it - though did forgive him later. I have to admit the phone masts picking up  various signals confused me.  Robbo's old training certainly kicked in with his evasion of the cops on duty outside, stealing the boat, getting to the beach and finding the phone, he may not have got all of his memory back, but something's  you 'remember' instinctively.  I was surprised the signal could be picked up since he'd buried the phone and not in a shallow 'grave' either.  I don't think he's a crime lord 630si just a foot soldier, but maybe lucky with the dumping of the mobile in the truck which so handily come along when he needed to dump it somewhere.

Willow was back to her aggressive self at the cop shop, arguing over her bike being held and initially with Justin when he told up after Brody told him about the crazy lady. Willow was/had staying/stayed in the un before mentioned granny flat so quite possible that is why they didn't know about each other. Although she puts up this brash front to others I think she is honest with Justin, it did seem to me her dad does have some sort of dementia and is in a home which she needs to fund hence her getting caught up with Boyd and his gang, if it's a good one won't be cheap. A tad on the silly side the whole stuck in a boot thing, Justin is a mechanic so shouldn't he be able to get out of it or will Ash and Ziggy come to his rescue again? That garage does seem to have more than it's fair share of getting trashed by undesirables.

Maggie has sussed something may be starting to happen between Ziggy and Brody and  Ben didn't implode when he came across them when Ziggy fixed the oven, acted quite cool in fact. Kind of liked Brody's old fashioned reasoning that he'd like to get Ben's approval and trust  before it went any further.  Neat little slot in of Brody mentioning going to the cops to get his blood tested.

[Red Ranger 1]

So, we get a bit more back story for Willow with her confirming her father has Alzheimer's.I do find myself feeling a bit of sympathy for her but I also continue to think Justin's being a fool in prioritising her well-being to such an extent.It's all right telling the police just enough to get an insurance pay-out but what's he going to do the next time Boyd turns up?Willow's already proved pretty unreliable with regards sorting things out.I did note back when Ziggy fixed the car exhaust that Justin would be better off offering her an apprenticeship than having her do the paperwork.Obviously Brody's reached the same conclusion but Justin doesn't quite seem to have got there yet.

It feels like we're meant to be thinking everything's Quinn's fault but I continue to have a great deal of sympathy for her.Again, I found Roo's judgemental attitude towards her pretty hard to stomach:She's known Ryder for a few weeks, Quinn's been looking after him his whole life in less than ideal circumstances, pretty much doing all the right things without things getting any better and has ended up a bit run-down and jaded, yet Roo thinks she has the right to tell her she's doing it all wrong.I'm glad Alf basically told her to go away and that he and Quinn had a proper chat afterwards.In many ways, he's a very different man than he was 20 years ago and perhaps she's lost a lot of the bitterness she had then as well, so it's nice to see them finally getting to put old ghosts to rest.Of course, then Ryder goes and overreacts.I really hope we're not going to have people acting like it's somehow Quinn's fault that he stole a car and ran someone over.Very bad editing at the end, I needed to watch it again to realise that we actually did see it was Roo (although the promo shows it clearer), could have done with a close-up.So, looks like he hasn't got ADHD but possibly something similar with the same symptoms.What's the bet that after he's seen a hundred specialist (okay, Quinn's probably exaggerating but still) Doctor Tori or one of her NDH colleagues will get him diagnosed in no time?

[630si]

Im also slowly coming round to Wilow as we learn more.

im still struggling with Quinn though, and we learnt more about what she went through also with her chat in the kitchen with Alf. I guess I have to tell myself that she’s dealt with Ryder for years so of course will handle it differently. Roo is getting a bit preachy though now. And really, she had her own estranged child and can’t really talk.

[Slade]

On 2/7/2018 at 19:32, Red Ranger 1 said:

Do you think then that it's possible that your dislike of Billie is because you've heard so many comments from other people saying how wonderful she is that you've become ever more determined to dislike her?

Firstly when I dislike a character I don't normally go out of my way to actively do this.  The dislike often occurs very naturally.  And I would like to hear a counter argument as to why liking/disliking a fictional character based primarily on the opinions of someone else is fundamentally wrong anyway.  Especially given that a lot of people post opinions not just to challenge someone but to try and get people to think a certain way.  All this is, is instead of thinking their way, they think the opposite.

For the sake of answering your question as honestly as possible then perhaps.  It's a definite possibility.  I thought back to the time when this happened and I can't recall reading a specific post or set of posts that made me think I'm going to dislike Billie but if you recall I had already gone through a period of disliking her.  So it simply resurfaced.  I think most probably a combination of things - reading other comments maybe, going back to what happened with Nate, dwelling on it and letting it fester.  It also doesn't help that she's female as I tend to often find a lot of female characters highly annoying anyway.  Even looking at it recently - Maggie/Ziggy/Willow.  And none of these have been as the result of reading other comments as I rarely go into the character discussion threads now or look in the Aus part of the forum as I'm trying by best to avoid any spoilers.

From my perspective I was pretty much proven right as IMO Billie exhibited extremely selfish, manipulative and deceitful behaviour with regards to VJ and the pregnancy.  I do wonder if it was quite similar to how I was with Maddy although the difference with Maddy was that at first a lot of the forum was against her so again it wasn't a case of possibly being influenced by other people's comments.  I already disliked her like most others.  But unlike some of the posters who did a U-turn when she changed and started to praise her I hadn't 'forgiven' her so even when she 'grew up' this continued.  I can actually be quite stubborn but sometimes I can change my mind and I did think Maddy was OK shortly before she left but regardless of whether I liked her I always enjoyed her interactions with Evelyn.

I guess it also doesn't help when you make a comment about a character, haven't directed it at any posters in particular and you get some ridiculously over the top reactions trying to insinuate that if you have a certain attitude in a fictional program you must be like that in real life (I have yet to encounter a half decent response as to why they believe this or have seen any evidence presented to substantiate this claim).  Then you have people who like these reactions IMO or others who default to liking any post irrespective of it's validity purely because it counters what has been said or because the characters being attacked are female not necessarily because they actually like these characters.  And it doesn't matter how many times you point out that it's only fictional in some cases it seems to fall on deaf ears.  This only seems to reinforce to me that it is pointless trying to reason with some people.  They will only hear what they want to hear.

 

On 2/7/2018 at 19:32, Red Ranger 1 said:

It did surprise me when she came back after a long break that you seemed to dislike her so much, because you seemed fairly even-handed towards her in her first stint and even sympathetic towards her at times, and then suddenly you seemed to hate every thing she did and delight in every bad thing that happened to her.

Is it unreasonable to hate that she lied to and deceived VJ and Leah?  And whilst I admit that I wanted her to suffer and at times found it satisfying (I will happily own that and remain unrepentant) and whilst a lot of what you said is true I would like to refer you to this post:

http://www.backtothebay.net/forum/topic/13480-latest-uk-episode-discussion/?do=findComment&comment=1405071

I wasn't happy about the cancer storyline the same way I wasn't happy when they did the same thing with Maddy previously.  One of the things that I mentioned with Maddy was that I was concerned that it would martyr her.  It didn't but I did change my attitude towards her.  This isn't the first time I've done this.  I hated Dani Sutherland so much back in the day that when Kane raped her I didn't have one iota of sympathy for her.  And I was actually on his side in court and found myself feeling sorry for him when he was driven out of town.  I even supported him when he embarked on a relationship with Kirsty a year later and fully supported them against Rhys and Shelly.  Then something happened in 2003 with Dani when they begun the relationship for a second time.  I felt really, really bad for her.  It was a scene where Kirsty sneaked off to meet Kane late at night and Dani caught her just as she was leaving the house.  They didn't say anything to each other.  Just looked at one another for a few moments.  Kirsty looked guilty and there were tears rolling down Dani's face before Kirsty left.  I don't know why but my attitude towards her changed after that, Even to the point where I hated Kane testifying against her in court and felt even if she deliberately ran him over he still should have dropped the charges regardless.  And funnily enough she ended up being one of my all time favourite characters.  In the case of Billie whilst I would have been unlikely to change my attitude towards her anytime soon I might have given a year or two but as they killed her off, I'll guess we'll never know.

I genuinely don't understand why some of my comments bother you so much.  Especially given that you've been in the same boat as I many times.  It seems as though because you feel my dislike of Billie is 'illogical' as I 'suddenly' went from being OK with her to not liking her that if you identify why perhaps you will find it easier to accept.  It's strange because despite the fact that were are virtually on polar opposites with regards to who we like/dislike in H & A, from our various discussions via PM we seem to have a lot in common.

I have to admit, I loved the facial expressions on Maggie any time she looked at Ziggy and Brody.  She has been looking rather fetching over the last couple of episodes.  Although I'm a little surprised she seems to be on-board with the idea of them getting back together.    I also found it really funny after Ziggy fixed the oven and Ben interrupted them in the Diner.  I do actually think it's quite reasonable for him to have reservations about a reunion.  I would even go as far as saying it's quite sensible as I still think Brody should wait a while before getting involved in anything but I accept maybe in soap terms they have to speed things up.  I quite enjoyed Ben's antics when Brody cooked dinner for them as futile as they were.

Whilst I'm enjoying seeing what this is doing to Tori, I have to admit she is right to break up with Ash and I think she should try and move on.  When the baby's born I suspect this will be extremely problematic for their relationship.

Wasn't sure what to make of the brief meeting of Brody and Willow.  Not particularly interested in her sob story and rather Justin just fixed her bike so she could ride off into the sunset and never return.  Despite how uncomfortable it would have been spending the night in a car boot, I'm sure being that close up to her compensated.

I actually don't mind Quinn.  I don't particularly like the fact that she doesn't seem to care too much about Alf but I understand that's obviously because she hasn't seen him in such a long time and they didn't part on good terms.  With regards to Ryder he's often a pain in the backside (I only like him when he hits on Raffy and Coco) so I can see exactly where Quinn is coming from although it does come across as though she doesn't particularly like him or perhaps resents him.  I did really enjoy when Roo called her out about her attitude towards Ryder and Quinn's subsequent "Excuse me?".  Can't really get my head round why Roo is so pro Ryder as I don't think he's done very much to suggest he's entitled to that much favouritism.  Although we'll see whether she changes her attitude towards him now.  I did much prefer Alf's softly, softly approach and he seemed to make good progress.  It will also be interesting to see if he also reassesses Ryder given that he's just ran over his older daughter.

 

[H&Alover]

Going on the basis that Quinn & Ryder were meant to be leaving is the only reason I can think of why she didn't mention Ryder's night terrors before.  They are really nasty things to go through, a lot more than your average nightmares or sleepwalking.  Roo  really was judgemental and way out of line. But Quinn's comment Ryder's condition that he's had since he was a baby and 'has ruined her life' doesn't scream she is on his side. It does seem she had explored every avenue so must be very frustrating for both of them to have no answer.  Sadly Ryder is of an age when he's been fully aware of what is wrong with him which for a teenage boy would be hard to deal with. Does seem sad Quinn's had to cope all on her own, is there really no-one she could have got help from?  Roo got it wrong though Ryder was suffering from a night terror when Coco woke him the morning of the Glow Day and he lashed out at her and that was before Quinn arrived. Then there was when Alf  disturbed him and he fell down the stairs. Ryder did seem happy when he heard Quinn singing, obviously something she used to do when he was small to get him to sleep. Nice idea of Alf to have Ryder stay with them while Quinn went off on her next job, but of course that was before he stormed off after hearing blaming him for ruining her life. Just how would he know Alf kept his car keys tucked in the sun visor?   Of course Red NDH do perform miracles, though neurological problems are beyond Tori's expertise, probably more like 999 specialists. I will ask again who looks after Ryder while Quinn is away, can't be  safe leaving him on his own surely? That ending was very unclear  as to whom Ryder hit, maybe TPTB were trying to keep it secret? 

The garage must be in quiet an isolated spot considering not one soul passed by from when Boyd and his happy band of men trashed it until Ziggy turned up the next morning. Willow can be very aggressive  which I can only put down as a defence mechanism to protect herself.  The only person she so far has opened up to is Justin, touching little scene when she was telling Justin about how her and her dad used to just take off in his car after her mum left, no wonder she is so reluctant to sell the car, reminds her of happier times.

Well quite a few people have picked up on the chemistry between Brody - Maggie, Marilyn, Mason and Raffy.  Ziggy finally had to admit to Maggie she did want to be more than friends with him, Maggie will talk Ben round.   Come on Justin stop being so blind and forget about Ziggy's past history and give her the apprentice's job, she does know what she is doing!

Well that dinner party went well didn't it.  Ben accusing Ziggy and Brody playing footsie under the table.  No comment on whether Brody's pesto matched up to Ben's mums.

Seems we missed another birthday - Raffy is now 15!

I'm slightly confused by a review I read in a paper today on tonight's H&A, if what they said was true when did that happen and with who?

Going back a bit to Robbo being missing when Kat got up in the night, didn't he tell her he went for a walk and then slept on the sofa so as not to disturb her?

 

[Dan F]

47 minutes ago, H&Alover said:

Seems we missed another birthday - Raffy is now 15!

Just another sloppy mistake... given she very clearly turned 14 only six months before this episode aired.

We've even got her birthday on her profile that they could have referred to (not that her 14th actually aired in June due to the erratic Oz scheduling anyway)

[Razabaza]

2 hours ago, Slade said:

From my perspective I was pretty much proven right as IMO Billie exhibited extremely selfish, manipulative and deceitful behaviour with regards to VJ and the pregnancy.

This is why I dislike Billie. She was so self-serving and sneaky.  I feel like the rape/baby/cancer storyline was just written to gain sympathy for her because maybe some viewers couldn't get over how truly manipulative she was. Well, it didn't work for me. I just don't like her. Yes, being raped is traumatic, but it gives her no right to try and pin a pregnancy on a schoolboy who she knows has a crush on her. 

Disliking Billie is just as justifiable as disliking any other character. Like, in "The Fast and The Furious", I know Dom is the main character and we're supposed to like and root for him, but in my eyes, he deserves to be punished for his crimes. Brian should not have let him go in the first movie.  It's the same with Billie, I dislike her simply for her actions. 

[630si]

There’s a little bit of thread drifting happening.

So Novak’s body has washed up, which was inevitable. It’s only a matter of time now for Robbo I think. The phone in melbourne, his body in the bay, even the Yabbie creek police force aren’t this stupid to start putting the pieces of the jigsaw together. Are they....?!

I was cheering for Hunter today, If I was him idve wound myself up so much as the night went on watching from a far. I don’t blame him for getting drunk and saying a few things. I don’t think idve kept my cool in his shoes. I thought his sarcastic comments back at Irene’s later toward Olivia “I wouldn’t have missed it” was funny and well handled. There will be tears here.