Trey Palmer - Luke Bracey

[Symphony]

I ended up feeling sorry for trey during fridays episode. No wonder he turned out the way he did with a stepdad like John. Im glad kirsty was there to talk him out of it and to eventually comfort him. Even after everything he had done to her family she still helped him out as she recognised he was just a troubled kid. I thought the scene at the police station was a nice touch with the way that they just looked at each other, even if we didnt get to see what happened to him.

You summed up exactly what I was thinking - but said it better than I did!

[dncllpyk]

l loved the scenes between Kirsty and Trey she knew exactly what to say to him. I hope this isnt that last we've seen of Trey.

[Red Ranger 1]

Well, with Trey's storyline apparently played out here in the UK, I thought I'd reflect on how my opinion of the character seemed to change throughout.His first episode didn't really give us much to go on but over the next few episodes it became clear he was a bit of a tool, who didn't really care about the effect his actions had on other people and was only concerned with making sure he looked good. The justification for his behaviour, that he'd been the target of bullies himself in the past, was a bit weak and didn't really excuse him.Even then though there were times when I thought he got the hard end of the stick:I disagreed with Xavier letting him take the blame for Roman's accident and it was a pity there was no real follow up on it, just Trey complaining about it to Ruby in an episode Xavier wasn't even in then forgetting about it.

Then they paired him up with Nicole which was a move I wasn't entirely happy with.At times they seemed to work okay together and he seemed to be a supportive boyfriend but there were a few moments that made me think he wasn't as nice as he suddenly seemed to be:He was still pretty smug with Jai and the others and seemed pretty quick to jump into bed with Nicole when she was in a vulnerable state.

Then something odd happened.The whole town turned against him...and I started to like him.Maybe it was because he seemed to be suffering from outsider syndrome, stuff that would be shrugged off if one of the main characters did it resulted in calls for him to be hung, drawn and quartered.Given that when he got together with Nicole I was expecting a "bad boy turns good" story I think what we got was a lot more interesting and showed the failings of most bad boy turns good stories.Trey is, frankly, what Aden should have ended up as last year instead of a pat "He spent a couple of weeks in a clinic and now he's everyone's friend."In fact I found him more sympathetic than Aden, probably because his victims were people who hated or humiliated him rather than people who cared about or tried to help him.Maybe that's why I suddenly liked him:Causing trouble for Jai, Nicole or Kirsty when they'd done nothing to deserve it just for the fun of it or to help his fragile ego just made him a jerk but while blowing them up was an extreme reaction I could understand him wanting to hurt people who seemed to take pleasure in treating him like dirt.

So it started with the sex tape.He clearly didn't deliberately set out to film himself and Nicole together, he tried to turn the camera off.He should have got Nicole to wait a moment but she was in full flow and he probably didn't want to interrupt her, he's not exactly a boy scout.He tried to erase it before anyone saw it and he had no intention of embarassing her at that moment.Then Ruby decided to go and tell Nicole about it and paint Trey in a bad light, without even really trying to talk to him, which only served to upset her.That got Nicole fired up and she stormed off to confront Trey.He was completely honest with her and she rewarded him by slapping him round the face, humiliating him in front of everyone.He should have waited until she calmed down and then tried to talk to her again but instead he decided to humiliate her back.Like I said, not a boy scout.

It was the wrong thing to do but the response was completely out of proportion.We were treated to a bunch of characters acting self-righteous about a teenage prank they'd have probably done themselves.(Ruby and Jai filming Matthew naked and posting it on the internet springs to mind.)I disagreed with Miles and Kirsty's attitude towards Trey when he came round to apologise, not even telling Nicole he was there;if she didn't want to see him, fair enough, but it was his choice.Jai used Trey giving the best apology he could, and it seemed genuine to me, as an excuse to lead a practical lynch mob.Ruby and Annie were out of line trying to get him banned from the trek, if they didn't want to spend time with him they should have just stayed out of his way, the world doesn't revolve around them.The reaction to him trying to kiss Nicole on the trek was the last straw:He misread the signals, he didn't act in a particularly offensive manner, she could have just told him she wasn't interested and left it at that.But instead you had her, Kirsty and John lining up to make him feel small.No wonder he snapped.

I find the relationship between Trey and John rather interesting.I don't think he's entirely to blame for the way Trey was, his problems probably started long before they met.John wanted Trey to become a fit and popular kid, perhaps partly because that was the sort of stepson he wanted, but perhaps also partly because that's what Trey wanted as well.In his early episodes, Trey does seem grateful to John for what he's done for him while although he gets a couple of strict moments John does seem to be largely motivated by a desire to protect Trey and do what's best for him.What Trey should have done was make friends with the likes of Geoff and Nicole but instead he decided to befriend the sort of people who made his life a misery because he seemed to think that was what being popular meant. After John found out Trey had lied about Kirsty, things seemed to change between them.John decided Trey needed more discipline to keep him in line which caused Trey to begin to resent him.And so they ended up in a vicious circle, with Trey acting up more and more and John coming down on him harder and harder.By the end unfortunately he seemed to have decided Trey was beyond help and given up on him.It's interesting that the scene of John plea bargaining with Martin to have Trey's "crime" dealt with by the school was similar to Miles doing the same for Melody, except John lacked Miles' ability to make teenagers feel at ease.Perhaps John's biggest failing was an inability to recognise his own culpability in what happened and that was the lesson his stepson learnt from him.

Hard to know what to make of Trey and his mother because we saw so little of her.She drifted into the Gardy storyline and then out again without any real clue why she was there:the thing about her working in a bank seemed so trivial I expected there to be more to it.She turned up again near the end to offer a much needed maternal presence but I think all we can really say is that she seemed to love both her son and her husband and tried to do what was best for them.

It's a shame Trey's final scenes were so ambiguous:I'm not sure if he meant to use the syringe on John or himself, maybe he wasn't sure either.But I think it should be left alone.People have finally recognised how troubled he really was, especially Nicole and Kirsty who seemed to regret some of the things they did, and he can get the help he needs.We can imagine a happy ending for him if that's the way we feel but I think it would spoil the impact of the storyline for us to actually see it.