Aden Jefferies - Todd Lasance

[Marsbar]

You are entitled to mean what you want but I don't agree with you!! A lot of people complain about Adens behaviour all the time, no matter what the reason for his behaviour is. We didn't see Aden apoligise to Nicole but a lot on Home and away do happens off screen. For example when Rachel thought that Tony was cheating with Belinda (after Jacks death) because he got lot of mms from her. then he showed Rachel the boat (Jacks boat that Tony had been working on) and then everything was fine. But we never got an explanation of who Belinda was. And after Tony tried to kill Angelo when rachel was at the hospital we never saw him really apoligised to her and we never saw her forgiving her. (I hope you understand my terrible English). But noone did complain about that.

When Aden had his breakdown a lot of people "hated" him for what he did to Belle, Rachel and his father. And that was potrayed like a breakdown, like he lost his mind for a period of time, and all he wanted was to get rid of his pain. And his father was a key to that. But when Tony almost killed angelo we did not see many complains about that. And It was more of a sudden change in behaviour because he couldn't handle his pain anymore. Tony, he even planned it for a long time. Aden never planned to do what he did.

charlie electrocuted the person who raped her long long time ago. It wasn't a breakdown (they didn't play it that way), but it was a person who reacted in panic. Every of this actions can be explained. Only Aden got punished for what he did. And a lot of you did think that he should have got to prison. I don't excuse what Aden did, but what the other did was just as bad and maybe even worse (if you have a look at their state of mind when they did it). Maybe the producers did a mistake and did not show enough of Adens comunity service, and maybe he should have got a lot of councelling after he left the clinic. But what about Charlie and tony??? tony had lost his son, he thinks that Angelo is his killer, charlie was raped and Aden was abused as a child (actually raped a lot of times). Do tony and charlie have better reasons for doing what they did?

Yes, aden is very moody sometimes, but he has been through a lot since he came to the show. What about Rachel, she is moody... Yes she has post natal stress disorder, and that is a decease... But she was moody before she got that child too. Geoff is very moody... He had a girfriend but couldn't sleep with her because of his belief but after he broke up with her he hooked up with someone else and slept with her very soon.

When Aden and Geoff were on the trawler, I think that geoff really crossed the line by telling aden what he did. He complained that Aden felt sorry for himself and did not think about the others who were grieving too, and he yelled at him that he need to accept that Belle was dead. But who was the one who left the school because he didn't see any reason to go on because Belle had died. And who ran away from it all together with Ruby. It seems like everyone thought that was ok, Belle was like a sister to Geoff... But Aden, as Belles boyfriend and husband, and he shouldn't have the right to grieve?? what??? People were complaining about his behaviour and grieving and told him to move on the day after his wife was buried!!! Morag and Nicole said he should move on. Three days after, Geoff ran away and that was ok... Hmmm....

And I haven't forgotten that geoff never was punished for killing a lot of sheep when he was at his grandfathers farm. Everyone excused him for that... Hmmm...

Well of course, Aden should't have hit Liam, because violence does not solve anything!! But it's very easy for me to understand his feelings about Liam. He almost lost Belle because of Liam. He sold drugs to her.... and he ruined her funeral. Liam is still a drug dealer, and is not to be trusted.

On the positive side, I think it's very good to see Nicole and Aden talk to each other again. I hope we are going to see a lot of their friendship in the future.

Sorry about my very long post!

It never bothered me that Aden didn't go to jail for kidnapping his father, Belle and Rachel or that they were so rough on Aden (bad example ) he was in a psychotic state a way you coulnd't recognise him so why judge him, same with Tony and Charlie.I don't even have to give an example it's his macho attitude day in day out that i don't appreciate he's not as dumb as Ric but seriously a little effort wouldn't hurt, he should be no exception unless it's his handicap (in a manner of speaking)

He deserves a taste of his own medicine now and then but that never goes unnoticed because no one has the right to treat him like he treats other people because he's the only one with a horrible past , there's always an excuse,you can't win..

He and Nicole are like the same level,if you like Aden i could understand why you appreciate everything Nicole pulls out

them both being brought in at the same time was no coincidence. excuses excuses .. my motivation is still that they gotta earn their respect! see how much i like them

No offence to the actor but i'm not drooling all over Aden because of his attidude? whatever, we can't all think the same and maybe i'm missing out on things.. (in the looks department)

and it's not helping either. which is sad because Aden fans are so wonderful to chat with so please don't take this personally if possible

I think the writers have also left bits and bobs out for a reason that u draw your own conclusion. As for 'the actor' not being rude to anyone's post but i truly believe that Todd Lasance is one of the greatest actors ever to come out of home and away he can portray any storyline and always show great emotion esp recently, and i'm not trying to start a row or anything but his looks have nothing to do with acting or storylines or the actual character, ya todd is hot and i do think that honestly but his acting talents outshine his looks and the writers turning him slightly bad again has made the storyline more exciting. When todd leave for LA i'm going to be heart broken but know he will be up there acting along side the great actors and actresess of modern times

[Georgia]

I would love to see Todd and Jessica Tovey make it in Hollywood. I think they both have amazing skill, and an appeal about them.

Imagine Todd and Jess reuniting on the big screen

Oh well, a girl can dream.

[Georgia]

[Red Ranger 1]

Well, as expected this year saw Aden's abuse background reduced to subtext at best.A lot of people objected to him sleeping with Nicole but I never had a problem with that, even if he didn't love her she was someone that he knew and trusted, I could understand him being comfortable with her where he wouldn't be with a stranger.And then he went and slept with a stranger.Actually I accepted that as well, it was obvious that he just wasn't feeling anything at the time and neither of them enjoyed it.Frankly, that ship well and truly sailed once they had him sleeping with Belle on a regular basis.It would be hard to argue that sleeping with her is all right but not with anyone else.

This might be considered heresy but I actually think they handled the abuse storyline a lot better with Cassie.They gave it the weight they needed to, they showed that she'd been deeply affected and mentally scarred by what had happened to her(proper mental scars, a fear of physical contact, not "Kissing and fondling's okay, it's just sex he has a problem with")but they didn't take it so far you wondered why she wasn't in an institution and they didn't have her go from being afraid of sex to not being able to get enough of it overnight.Aden's storyline seemed to bubble along fine until a bunch of lesser writers came in with a load of great ideas about what they could do with an abuse victim, didn't think about how screwed up they were making him and then just made him magically better when they got bored.

(And yes, he should have gone to jail at least five times this year.Although he did get beaten up and left lying unconscious on the beach, which I guess was a kind of karma...)

[jodlebirger]

well, i certainly disagree. Cassies abuse was forgotten just in a minute, and then she was reformed to a sleep-around. Sometimes that is a consequense from abuse too, but Cassie went from getting scared for intime contact to a "bed-jumper" in a very short time. Yes, aden has been reformed too, but not so fast, and he has slept with other people under different circumstances which make it more believable. It was never even said much about Cassie's abuse, just that her uncle had done something to her. The whole storyline was very diffuse. She was afraid of having sex with Ric, then told Sally about it, had a trial about so she could stay with Sally and Flynn and didn't have to live with her uncle when her grandmother died. Then after the trial it was mentioned once that she was going to get some councelling. And then it was forgotten. Totally forgotten. The storyline went on for a week or so. It felt like the writers was afraid that the subject was too controversal.

Sometimes you just get small scars from abuse, but sometimes the scars go deeper. And it is a question of the circumstances too, and for how long the abuse is going on. And in Adens case it was about so much more than the abuse, but the writers chose to point out that it was the abuse which was the reason for Adens behaviour. But there was a lot more to this storyline, neglect, his brothers who ran away from home and went to jail, his fathers alcoholism etc... I have friends who work in the child/youth psyciatric care and Adens reaction to his past (and present) is very realistic. I do agree that there has been some "blips/miss" here and there, but nothing really serious... The worst was probably the aftermath of Adens breakdown, which was done too fast, and the relationship with belle and belle herself got all the attention. And it would have been better if he didn't get a good behaviour bond, but just a community service.. I do agree that he broke this a few times, but this is HAA and I find it much more disturbing that murders dont get punished (Angelo).. than Adens small actions, he hasn't seriuously hurt people after his trial. He has just threatened them a few times, the worst was when he attacked angelo at the police station and when he got into a fight with the drug dealer. But nobody got hurt, not even a black eye (exept Liam, and what Liam did to aden was much worse, he was on a good behaviour bond too!!!) And we should have seen more of the community service, that would have made the story more realistic. And he should have got more councelling after the trial... Do the writers have something against coucelling? because those characters who deal with a terrible trauma and do not get professional help are those who recover from their trauma/problems.. Look at Kane, he really did want to change, he did a lot of councelling with Flynn and look at what happened to Kane...

What I don't like is that they have difficulties with making Aden more adult and grown up. He has been in the show for a couple of years now and we should have seen more progress in his character. And I also feel like his actons, especially after Belles death should have been more explored and tied up to his past - his reaction to his fathers behaviour etc.. I feel that Romans departure from the show left an empty space in some of the others storyline (esp. Adens) which they havent been able to fill in. Roman could have told him that he was doing the excactly the same his father did (the drinking) etc...

But I think that this happens a lot, when the characters stay in the show for a couple of years or more, we just se more of the same behaviour and it feels like the writers have a problem of making the characters older and wiser. I have to say that I think that other TV-shows do this much better than HAA, and a lot of the characters are staying for a longer time too. Sometimes I think they change the wrong characters, look what happened to geoff and annie when they tried to make them more adult and exciting....

But this is a soap, and it is not meant to be a serious drama, but when they are doing serious and sensitive issues it is very important that they are doing it right.. I do believe that they tried to do it right with aden, at least to a certain point. But they do forget very often that all the storylines the characters have, are going to affect how the viewers see them. It happens far to many times that they forget about what have happened to the characters in the past and do storylines which conflict with earlier storylines. But they are also afraid to loose viewers if they are focusing too much on one single problem, but consitency is very important. But I guess that it isn't always easy to be a writer on this show, different people want different storylines.

[ebrett84]

I wasn't religiously watching during Cassie's time on the show, but I don't think it was handled well at the beginning. She was introduced as a nudist maniac, then suddenly she's freaking out when Ric so much as touches her. Huh? Then she's back to being a get around. What I did like about her story arc was that she was abused as a child and kept getting subconsciously drawn back into relationships with guys who would hurt her. That's quite depressingly realistic (or at least not unrealistic). I agree with RR that Aden's abuse was not handled nearly as well as a lot of people seem to think it was.

[Red Ranger 1]

I guess the beginning of Cassie's plotline wasn't handled that well, she was pretty flirty but then freaked out when Ric tried to kiss her, but that's not really all that different to Aden climbing through Belle's window and getting into bed with her but not wanting her to do anything once he's there. However, when Cassie and Ric first slept together she was left with very mixed feelings about the experience and ended up breaking up with him because she felt he hadn't taken into account how it might make her feel, whereas in contrast Aden seemed on top of the world after sleeping with Belle and never had any negative thoughts about the experience.I don't think Cassie's "bed-hopping" really started until she got together with Macca, a year after she was introduced.(Not sure if she and Ric were meant to be sleeping together when they reunited or not but I doubt they did it very frequently.And we know she never slept with Aden.)As ebrett said, if you want to go into subtext it does explain her self-confessed habit of pursuing abusive or unhealthy relationships, Mattie even suggested she'd become addicted to abuse.

While I think it certainly fitted the crime, from a narrative point of view it might have been best not to have Aden on a good behaviour bond, simply because both Aden and the police completely ignored it. (Twice Aden attacked someone in front of them and the police took no action whatsoever.)It was largely used as a plot device for him to be blackmailed.I think the only sense in which what Liam did was worse than Aden is the potential danger involved.Liam didn't deliberately push Aden off a roof, he was on drugs and tripping and just pushed him away.(Not sure when it was established he was under bond or had any sort of criminal record either...although I guess if he doesn't he's developed an Adenlike ability to make the police forget what he's done.)Aden on the other hand deliberately caused Liam pain and clearly enjoyed doing so.I think that's my main problem with the character, not the severity of his "crimes" but the attitude with which they're committed.With the possible exception of the kidnapping(his attitude towards the murder attempt is more conflicted), he's never shown any remorse or taken responsibility for his actions(which Angelo clearly did).The minor hate campaign that erupted when Tony tried to punish him for one of his offences is a sign of the lack of consequences there normally are.

I remember an interview where they said how proud they were that they took Aden's abuse further than they would have done in the past but frankly they showed why they haven't.We had what would usually have been the climax point early on when Larry told Rachel about the abuse and then they both talked to Aden about it.There was a real feeling that the secrets, lies and self-deception had been destroying them both as individuals and as a family and now it was out in the open they could finally start to heal.It wasn't a miracle cure, we could see Aden struggling towards a recovery:he couldn't bring himself to return to the house where the abuse happened so Roman took him in, he didn't want to go to the Anzac ceremony because it reminded him of his grandfather but he managed to accept he needed to put the past behind him.They could have carried on like that, with him making slow but definite progress, and it would have been a good storyline.But instead they threw in more ideas-he's afraid of girls touching him, he beats up would-be rapists, his father was abused as well so he tries to kill him-without thinking hard enough about what they were going to do with them and the resolutions ended up being perfunctory or non-existent.The closest we had to an end to the storyline was the moment in court when he speaks out about his abuse.It was slightly undermined by the fact he only did it to save himself from jail but it could have worked if they'd actually followed through on the aftermath.We should have seen the reaction of other characters, we should have seen them struggling with how to handle Aden, we should have seen Aden realising that no-one was judging him and he had nothing to be ashamed of.Instead it was just never mentioned, characters who'd never had any time for Aden were suddenly pleasant to him without any of the scenes necessary to justify it and in fact it wasn't clear if anyone actually knew what he'd said in court apart from Nicole who was there.(Roman, Belle, Morag and Angelo all seemed to know already.)

I don't think there's really any need to have Aden grow up at the moment.I think because of everything that's happened to him there's a tendency to view him as older than he is.For all the grown-up trappings, living together and getting married, his relationship with Belle came across as more of an adolescent romance, a first love that he naively thought would last forever which became about marriages and children because he thought that's what people in an adult relationship do even though he wasn't really mature enough for it.Given Aden's history, it makes sense that whatever his chronological age he'd still emotionally be a teenager.

[jodlebirger]

I do agree with most of your last post RR1, especially the way the writers handled the storyline about the aftermath of Adens breakdown.

But I still feel they could have made him more mature by now, and I don't mean marriages and kids. I have always though that his proposal to Belle and the wedding was a bit out of character for Aden. He was afraid of loosing her again after what happened with the drugs, her and Liam but marriage was a bit far to stretched. And I don't like that the writers very often seem that marriage is a good storyline when it comes to the young couples. Maybe some young girls dream about the white dress and all that stuff, but I think that all the teen marriages through the years on this show is sending a wrong message. And its not realistic either. Most young girls and boys have other thoughts in mind than marriage and its very normal to have focus on education and future work opportunities and also relationship - but not marriage yet. Belle and especially Aden were far to immature for marriage. Well, Belles wish was a result of her illness because she knew she was going to die. But for Aden... And all the stuff about the ring and the loan shark show he was very immature. And he still is using the same wrong tatics (getting angry, building up defence etc.) when he is trying to solve his problems. And it is here I think the writers could have made him more grown up. He should have learned more to handle difficult issues by now, and also start to forgive his father maybe. And belles death should have made him more mature too, but I don't think it has. he seem more childish than ever. His actions towards Nicole, and when he stole Poppys car without thinking about the consequenses was a evidence of how immature he still is. He is now more acting like a 14 year old, rather than a 20 year old (it was said in an ep. in august that belle was 20, and Aden is at the same age).

[Georginaa_x]

It's so hard to believe that a plot device to complicate matters for Ric and Cassie has turned into such a magnificent character. Aden is everything I could want in a character and so much more and the storylines he has been handed this year have been nothing short of brilliance. What started as a sexual abuse revelation storyline (though I should stress I never saw it as simplistically as that) has grown over the course of a few months into a full blown psychological analysis of what I would boldly state as one of the finest characters Home and Away has ever produced - we know and have been embroiled in Aden's family history, we know what motivates him and exactly what makes him tick. And yet the beauty of this is that he always remains quite unpredictable - despite the emotional work the character has undergone he has lost none of his edge. Whilst Aden and his journey can be accredited to the writers, the way in which it has been pulled off on screen is most certainly down to Todd Lasance, an outstanding young actor who I feel is destined for big things.

Does everyone else feel so postively about Aden or has he not been as well received by others as by me?

I really like Aden. I think Todd is a wonderful actor and has great talent. I agree with you 100%

[Zetti]

Aden is one of the most complex characters I have watched ad thats is one og he reason that he is my favourite male character at the moment. The way he acts and as Foxy said his unpredictability means that we are always interested to know what he is gonna do next, I can repeat myself till I die but Todd is amazing actor and pulls Aden off really well and I for one hopes he has a good future.