Ruby/Charlie

[brady!]

i just read the spoilers for the 9th of august! i cant wait for the ruby and charlie storyline! Charlie might be actually there for Ruby? hopefully it turns out good.

[Inactive User]

I read them too, Brady I am sooo excited! Yah for more Charlie/Ruby scenes at last!

[lyt]

After reading the spoilers, it doesn't sound like Ruby's

drinking

is a one-time thing so does that mean it's going to develop into a problem? Or will Charlie intervene in time?

To clarify: Ruby will

get drunk

next week, right? And then Charlie sees that

Indi

has bought

alcohol

for her next, next week? So it's not just once.

Note: I don't know what constitutes as a spoiler so I may be overdoing it a little.

Edited July 24, 2010 by lyt

[lollypop]

It's so frustrating. Charlie was out fixing tables with Angelo while Ruby was practically falling apart in the store room. She was literally one room away from having the opportunity of being a proper mother and showing she cared for someone other than Angelo.

Ever notice that when Angelo has a problem and says that he's fine, Charlie will keep pushing it until he finally tells her what's up. Although usually she doesn't have to try very hard because he just dumps his problems in her lap anyways.

But when something's botheriing Ruby she'll ask her once, maybe twice if she's bored and can't find lover boy, and if Ruby says she's fine, Charlie just seems to accept that and then walks away. Leaving Nicole or Irene to console the poor girl.

There is a real imbalance in Charlie's personal life at the moment. While things are going well for her and Angelo, her relationship with Ruby is really starting to suffer. She's focusing so hard on not stuffing up things with Angelo that she's completely lost any focus she had on being a good mum to Ruby.

And you know it's bad when Ruby has to have a full on emotional meltdown before Charlie starts care enough to want to help her. If Charlie is so concerned for Ruby and really wanted to know what was up with her, she could have asked Nicole or even Xavier.

But she didn't even bother. I know that the writers are probably doing it for storyline purposes to make it so that when Ruby finally does confess everything to Charlie it becomes a big thing. But do they really have to make Charlie look like the worst mother/sister ever in order to do so?

We need to see Charlie try more. From what I saw from the preview at the end of last notes episode, it looks like we'll finally get to see the Charlie/Ruby beach scene we've discussed before. Although I'm not sure, I think it could be from Monday nights episode. If not Monday then it's definitely Tuesday nights.

I just hope Charlie puts up more of a fight in the beach scene. It's not right the way she keeps just letting the issue go as if it will solve itself. And I can't imagine she'll be very happy with herself when she finds out second hand that Ruby has been drinking to numb her pain rather than feeling like she can talk to Charlie.

I hope that when Charlie see's this she realises just how bad things are for Ruby and she'll start to play a much stronger role in her life and be present more often. Unlike the ususal cup of coffee and quick chat at the diner that's been going on now for the last six months.

Charlie kicked up such a fuss when Ruby ran away, saying how she wanted her home and how much she loved her. Even going as far as telling her own father she would never speak to him again if Ruby didn't return. But where has this gone? She has Ruby back but yet she has done nothing to bridge the gap between them.

Yes they are back on speasking terms, but the fact that Ruby feels like she can't move home obviously means that there are still issues they need to work through. And while Charlie has been good about giving Ruby that space, she's made no effort to to try and correct things between them.

I pointed this out on the H&A Message Board but I'll point it out again. Charlie went through months of therapy to try and and work through her issues so she could make a commitment to Angelo and tell him that she loves him. Why the hell can she do that for a man, but she can't be bothered to do the same to fix things with Ruby? I mean surely her relationship with her daughter is much more important than a relationship with yet another man, who she probably won't even be with for the rest of her life.

I love the Charlie character. But somethimes she just does things that I don't get. She treats her boyfriend with more care and support than she does Ruby and Ruby's her flesh and blood. No wonder the poor girl is having a meltdown. She has no mother to take care of her. I think Charlie needs to set Angelo aside for a while. Let him deal with his own problems and dramas, and for once pay some attention to Ruby.

[jldraw]

^ Your post is 100% spot on. They really have made Charlie look like a poor mother all season long up to this point. I mean she's more of a mother to Angelo than she is her own daughter. I know creator Bevan Lee said in an interview in the H&A magazine last year that he only lets fans' opinions "inform his writing, not drive it" but it's pretty obvious to me that word is getting back to the H&A staff that the majority of the fanbase is unhappy with Charlie's neglect of Ruby. I mean Rebecca Breeds brought it up in a recent interview in the UK, there was mention of it a few weeks ago in one of the soapie magazines...the topic of how poorly the Ruby/Charlie relationship has been handled in the past six months has become a legitimate issue among the fanbase when it shouldn't have been an issue in the first place.

I should mention though that the preview scene that you mentioned of Ruby and Charlie at the beach is nowhere to be found in the previews following Friday nights episode. In fact it seems like the next person to try her hand at sorting Ruby out will be Bianca who basically informs her that she is a "smart girl making some bad decisions". So add Bianca to the list of adults who are aware that Ruby is going off the rails before her own mother has.

Edited July 24, 2010 by jldraw

[Red Ranger 1]

To add a bit of perspective, I chose February 2009 as a random example to see how often Charlie and Ruby used to have scenes together.There were five episodes that month where we saw them together(three of them in the second half)and, aside from one or two scenes to do with Leah's birthday, they centred around Ruby's relationship with Xavier and the troubles Freya was causing. And also Ruby hiding the drugs from Charlie and never giving her the full story, so I don't know why people think she always used to confide in her, the other way round seemed to happen more often(and still does).It's more than we get these days but they had plenty of episodes where only one of them appeared and all their material was with friends their own age/love interests.

Why isn't Charlie trying to fix her relationship with Ruby?Simple, it doesn't need fixing.They're as close now as they were when they first came in.The only thing that sets them apart from any other mother and daughter is that they don't live together and even that isn't exactly unheard of for someone Ruby's age.(I don't mind Ruby's relationship with Irene, that's just the sort of person Irene is whether Ruby lived with her or not, she's had a lot of scenes with Romeo recently too.In fact I'd say they're making Irene out to be just as bad a "mother" as Charlie, since she hasn't really noticed anything up either.)If you were a seventeen-year-old girl and you had a crush on your teacher, who would you talk to about it, your mother or your best friend?If you thought your teenage daughter was hiding something, would you really pressure her to tell you or stalk her to find out what's going on?Or would you just keep the lines of communication open and trust that she'll tell you when it's right for her?That's why Charlie's helping Angelo more than Ruby, not because she's a bad mother but because Angelo wants her help and Ruby doesn't.

I do agree they need to have more scenes together, even if it is just meeting up for occasional cups of coffee(which, frankly, is the most realistic thing to happen in their situation), just to show that they do still talk to each other and there is still a relationship there.This was always going to be difficult to follow up on, once the initial shock wore off, it would be too easy to have them either forget about it and go back to the way things were or slip into a mother/daughter relationship.I've heard a lot of people suggest there should be some big crisis which ends with Ruby calling her "Mum" and maybe this next storyline will be it.But I think they should be more subtle than that, I think she just start calling her that, not all the time, just now and then when she feels it's appropriate, much like you would when meeting a parent you didn't know when you were growing up(except she did know her but you know what I mean).Mind you I do find that preferable to what I'm afraid they're going to do, just ignore the issue and then have her say "Goodbye, Mum" when one of them leaves in a too-little-too-late fashion.

[lollypop]

If you compare those five episodes in Feb 2009, to what we get now, that's a dramatic fall in the amount of screen time Charlie and Ruby have together. At one stage this year, their lack of interaction was so bad, if you weren't familiar with the show and had only begun watching it, you could almost question if they knew each other. For the first few months the only people Charlie really talked to, where Angelo, Leah and her work colleagues. While Ruby spent most of her time with Xavier and Nicole.

The Charlie/Ruby relationship does need fixing. Yes they are close again, but that doesn't mean everythings fine. After Grant was murdered and Charlie and Ruby were being dragged through the murder investigation, they both tried to protect each other because they faced jail time if Ross didn't come forward. But he did and after that it seemed like Charlie and Ruby forgot the situation there relationship was before that. They pushed the friction aside for the sake of getting on.

They never actually sat down and talked things through. Discussed their feelings about the whole thing and what it means for them for the future. They had the arguments, disagreements, the "I never want to see you again" tantrums etc. But we never actually saw a reconciliation as such. It's like things were just magically fixed over night when Ruby almost died from undiagnosed diabetes.

Obviously if a seventeen year old minor is crushing on her much older school teacher and wanting a relationship with him, the last person she would tell is her Police Sergeant mother. But it's not just that, she never really seems to tell Charlie anything anymore. At one point she confided in Charlie that she was going to have sex with Xavier. Now she doesn't seem to talk to her about anything. It's always Charlie talking about her problems with Angelo. And while Ruby doesn't seem to want to make the effort to confide in her, it's not exactly like Charlie takes enough interest to talk to her properly.

It's all well and good to leave the lines of communication open, but up until Thursday nights episode you have never guessed the existed. People say Leah is overbearing of VJ, but compared to the Charlie/Ruby relationship at least we can see that she cares and makes the effort to try and work out what's going on even if VJ won't talk about it. Charlie invests SO much time in her relationship with Angelo, but she can't do the same for her own family. Why is that?

The thing with Angelo is, is that he's a grown up. He should have outgrown his teenage tantrums and self centeredness a long time ago. But he hasn't. He just constantly whinges about his problems and has this whole "the world is against me" attitude to everything. Maybe if he didn't screw things up for himself so often the "world" would be much kinder to him. Instead he does something he shouldn't and when it comes to being punished he whinges to Charlie about his life sucks to the point she feels sorry for him and forgets that he was in the wrong anyways and then she tries to fix his problems.

I mean at least Ruby tries to make things better for herself instead of running to Charlie and then when she realises she can't she does seek advice (although most recently it's been from Irene or Nicole). Charlie lte Ruby walk around with a miserable look on her face the whole time they were helping do up the surf club/restaurant. And what did she do....nothing. I mean yeah she asked if she wanted to talk and then pointed out the obvious that she was having more than a bad day. But then she went straight back to fixing yet another one of Angelo's problems/concerns and didn't even notice that Ruby had disappeared for quite some day without any apparent excuse or reason.

Saying they need more scenes together is an understatment. They need family therapy. If Charlie could to all that effort to sort out her Angelo problems, surely to God she could make the effort for her own daughter. Come on Charlie, kick it up a gear. Ruby's on the verge of a complete meltdown. I know Nicole is trying to help her, but seriously, I think Ruby needs more parental guidence than teenage best friend guidence.

[Inactive User]

Looks there is gonna be another Charlie/Ruby scene tomorrow night:

http://au.tv.yahoo.com/home-and-away/galle...6-30-july-2010/

I wish I should use this picture as a avatar but I don't want to get into trouble haha because it's a spoiler, lol!

Edited July 26, 2010 by ~JarlieFanEver~

[CougarCat]

Charlie and Ruby should have remained sisters. I cannot stand them as mother and daughter, it isn't and never was believable. This has probably been mentioned way back on this thread somewhere but it seems unlikely the producers set out to turn them into mother and daughter but as an afterthought for added drama. Next we'll find out that April is really Bianca's daugher, instead of her half sister - but really, those two would be more plausible.

[homeandaway:)]

im excited for the new charlie and ruby storyline, finally! and i really think the writers have been making more of an effort to reconnect the two. im still kindof sick of the massive amount of ruby and nicole scenes, even though i do really like them as bestfriends.

and in realtion to comments above about how charlie and ruby used to be closer last year, i totally agree. they were kindof bestfriends, and i think thats what they might be trying to do this year. like the writers are trying to make the characters have more close friends outside of the charlie/ruby relationship and make the mother/daughter relationship seem more realistic. eg) ruby not condifiding much to charlie anymore.

after reading the spoilers for the next few weeks, im starting to think that ruby might be moving back in with charlie again sometime soon! becuase there are two mentions of "ruby getting sick of bianca moving in" etc in the next couple weeks. i reckon once that happens things will be heaps better between them.