Should Belle have found her Dad?

[bijou]

Yes, if they had a good storyline to introduce him. Unlike what they did with Donna's dad on Neighbours.

[Lise]

Yes. It is the one missing peice of her story for me. The mention of finding him before she died was pointless and ended up sticking out.

[Guest]

Yes it would of been amazing and wonderful if she found him before she died

[bijou]

I could be wrong about this, but i think Amanda deliberately kept his identity from Belle because c'mon Belle was a jounilist if she really wanted to she could've found the guy isn't that what they do?

[Zetti]

Personally, I cant see what good would have came from her finding her dad, she had Amanda, Irene, Geoff, Annie and then Aden so she didnt really need her father.

[HighwayUnicorn]

I agree with Lise. To find her dad would have been good, especially if the storyline was good.

Saying that, I think that because she was dying & in that circumstance, I don't think it was worth mentioning.

She didn't have that much longer in the show after her dad was mentioned.

But there was no point in mentioning him if it wasn't going to be followed through.

[jodlebirger]

I think it was pointed out very well why her real dad was mentioned. I am suprised that so many people seem to have missed or misunderstood that. Belle didn't know who her father was, he could have been mean or just a person who didn't want to know her.... Rachel told her to focus on those who loved her and not to find a "fantasy" figure... She really couldn't know what kind of person he was... I actually thought it was totally wrong to not bring up her foster parents.... It was actually them who brought her up, giving her a roof over the head etc... Biological parents aren't always the best thing'. And she was adopted for a reason. I think its a shame that H&A sometimes are giving out wrong signals about what's important in life..., and maybe make it worse for some groups of people (adopted, abused etc)...

Belle was always "running away" from her friends and "family" in the bay... just because she couldn't face the truth that she was dying, and it was easier for her to think about someone that she wasn't that attached to/someone that she didn't love but just was a fantasy because that was easier for her to deal with. To find her father was just an another way for Belle to escape from the difficult things... Belle was always a runner... She didn't tell about the drugs, she didn't tell Angelo that she was in love with Aden and kind of betrayed both Aden and Angelo, and she didn't tell about her illness. And she always ended up lying and hiding from the ones that loved her. And her father was brought up to point out that it was time for her to stop hiding and be fair to those who always stood by her Aden, Irene, Annie, Geoff etc...

[Red Ranger 1]

I guess there are a lot of characters in Home and Away who have significant gaps in their family trees (we've never heard anything about Romeo's father, for instance), but the fact Belle's debut storyline involved her trying to track down her birth mother perhaps makes the lack of information about her father all the stranger.We literally know nothing about him:Was he a classmate of Amanda's or someone older, were they in a relationship, did he know she was pregnant?It's tempting to speculate that, with her quest for her mother not having achieved the desired result despite their ultimately getting along well, Belle put off looking for her father until it was too late.It's also tempting to speculate the same was true of the writers and her brief search for him was a half-hearted attempt to address it.(Might they have had her find him as part of her departure storyline if they hadn't decided to kill her off?)The "Focus on the people you've already got" bit felt, to me, less like a heartfelt message and more like a rather pat cop-out.

To be honest, I didn't even think about her adopted parents and it's true they should have been informed.(Maybe they were off-screen?)But I never got the impression they were particularly interested in her, they knew where she was and didn't try and get in touch for three years.I guess it's a chicken/egg situation:Did Belle's adoptive parents distance themselves from her because she didn't like them or did Belle not like them because they distanced themselves from her?I actually got the feeling at the time she'd have been happy to stay in touch, from her behaviour when she spoke with her adopted father.Although soaps in general, and society in general, tend to be rather dismissive of adoptive parents and attach too much importance to blood ties, I never really considered Belle's adoptive family to be typical of adoptive parents and I think the fact she did have a loving, "adopted" family in Irene, Annie and Geoff redresses the balance somewhat.(After all, it was Irene, not Amanda, she entrusted her last messages to.)

[Dalby]

I think she had all the family she needed around her, but introducing her dad could of led to Irene getting a possible romance.

[HighwayUnicorn]

I guess there are a lot of characters in Home and Away who have significant gaps in their family trees (we've never heard anything about Romeo's father, for instance), but the fact Belle's debut storyline involved her trying to track down her birth mother perhaps makes the lack of information about her father all the stranger.We literally know nothing about him:Was he a classmate of Amanda's or someone older, were they in a relationship, did he know she was pregnant?It's tempting to speculate that, with her quest for her mother not having achieved the desired result despite their ultimately getting along well, Belle put off looking for her father until it was too late.It's also tempting to speculate the same was true of the writers and her brief search for him was a half-hearted attempt to address it.(Might they have had her find him as part of her departure storyline if they hadn't decided to kill her off?)The "Focus on the people you've already got" bit felt, to me, less like a heartfelt message and more like a rather pat cop-out.

To be honest, I didn't even think about her adopted parents and it's true they should have been informed.(Maybe they were off-screen?)But I never got the impression they were particularly interested in her, they knew where she was and didn't try and get in touch for three years.I guess it's a chicken/egg situation:Did Belle's adoptive parents distance themselves from her because she didn't like them or did Belle not like them because they distanced themselves from her?I actually got the feeling at the time she'd have been happy to stay in touch, from her behaviour when she spoke with her adopted father.Although soaps in general, and society in general, tend to be rather dismissive of adoptive parents and attach too much importance to blood ties, I never really considered Belle's adoptive family to be typical of adoptive parents and I think the fact she did have a loving, "adopted" family in Irene, Annie and Geoff redresses the balance somewhat.(After all, it was Irene, not Amanda, she entrusted her last messages to.)

Yeah, I do actually agree with that RR1. There were definitely a few odd things about Belle's dad, the fact that Amanda didn't even mention him. & there were a lot of questions that went unanswered. But Belle didn't actually need a dad. She had her family. Finding her dad could have been a good storyline within other circumstances as opposed to when she was dying.