Dex/April

[Pierced Musie]

I couldn't find an April discussion thread but did find this one. And I guess my ramblings actually include Dex as well so here goes...

I used to be a fan of April up until halfway through last year. When she first appeared she was quite different from all the other girls because she was a little kooky but cool with it, if that makes sense? So when they first paired her up with Dex it didn't seem all that big of a stretch to me, because he was just completely kooky and brought out her geek side. And that was her best quality.

For me the turning point was not her relationship with Heath but what happened after. I know it was a bit of a WTF moment when April went there with Heath but you could see the thought process behind it and Rhiannon played it perfectly. You could see the change from that awkward kooky/geeky teen to one hell of a sex kitten. She matured and grew up, which is what you want to see happen to characters. But you can't let that maturity out of the box and then stuff it back in because it is bound to annoy some fans. I am not saying that April & Heath should have stayed together (I love Bianca/Heath too much!) but they should have stuck to that character growth after that relationship. But they went back to Dex/April and that wasn't terrible at first but the more they tried to backtrack to that innocent phase in their relationship the more I felt they had lost the plot.

Since posting more on this board I have mentioned multiple times that I find April has become more creepy, bunny boiler-like and generally freaky. For me that started when Dex got closer to Steph (the nurse, right?) (I am not even going to go into a rant about how they threw that character under a bus for April) and April just wouldn't listen to anyone when it came to leaving Dex to do what he wants. If she had been the guest character everyone would have been calling her a stalker with the way she treated them all. I had hoped that would stop when that arc was over and she got her own way but when she got back together with Dex it got even worse. The crazy eyes were at full force and the moment that bugged me was when she got Dex to throw out his bed for her, even though they had been spending loads of time at Irene's... where 1. she spent a great deal of time sleeping with Heath & 2. Heath was staying at the time. Surely I wasn't alone in thinking that moment was odd? And a little bunny-boilerish?

And now the most recent thing that has just got me praying that April leaves soon. The way she has wedged herself into post-memorywipe Tamara's life and was having a go at Kyle for doing the same thing. I don't understand why she is more focused on pushing Casey towards Tamara, who has made it perfectly clear that she feels uncomfortable because whenever Casey looks at her he looks desperate and is expecting too much. It would be okay... if Casey was her patient and not Tamara. Even when Casey has a small breakthrough to just give Tamara space it is April who pushes him yet again. Plus the fact that she even has her own patient is something I can't wrap my head around since she has only just started her uni course. I thought they weren't allowed near patients completely until a year had gone? And if she was such a friend to Tamara before she wouldn't have been allowed near her at the hospital in a professional situation (just as a friend).

It is the faint whiff of Mary-Sue behaviour as well because everyone likes/loves her.
To be honest I don't know whether it is the writing, acting choice or whatever that has made me dislike this character but I went from liking to disliking and that is a shame since it is a character that is supposed to be liked. And it ruined my love for Dex in the process.

Okay, I'm done .

[Red Ranger 1]

Discuss thread for April is here:

I agree with pretty much all of the above post.I did think when she first came in that she was a character who was good at first but could easily become unbearable after a while and even in the early days there was psycho behaviour, notably the way she treated John and Xavier over the whole hybrid bus idea.But it's now gone overboard to the point where she's a complete writers' pet.I still haven't quite managed to forget the way she was made out to be the victim when she stole that prescription pad, with Sid and Dexter falling over themselves to say how wonderful she was and cover for her.

The whole storyline with Steph was an utter joke.It felt like we were supposed to automatically hate her for sleeping with Dexter without being April.Then the writers seemed to realise that Steph was coming across as sympathetic, so they told the actress to stop being nice, gave her a personality transplant between weeks and had her demonised for stuff April would get up to herself given half the chance.(Okay, maybe not the fudging patients' results, but if wanting to have sex all the time, now matter how inappropriate, is a crime then she'd be serving a life sentence.)Not happy with that, we then have to sit through week upon week of Dexter getting metaphorically beaten up for daring to prefer another girl to April with her repeatedly sneering "You had sex with Steph at work" when you know full well it's the fact he had sex with Steph that bothers her, not the fact that it was at work.And then, naturally, pretty much straight after she starts working at the hospital, she's kissing Dexter instead of working and it's fine when she does it.It feels like the characters have started believing their own publicity:After two years of Rhiannon Fish calling them soul mates in every interview she does, we've now got April doing the same, apparently oblivious to the fact that no-one actually says that without being psychotic.I think it must have been in the Casey thread that someone talked about Jason Smith overacting to try and keep Robbie as a geek.It feels like Charles Cottier, and to a certain extent Rhiannon Fish, is doing the same, with the result that instead of Dexter's quirkiness being natural it often boils down to Charles Cottier waving his arms about and overenunciating his lines.

[Pierced Musie]

It was me who mentioned Jason Smith and his ability to overact and you are right but I just didn't want to admit it. I loved Dex because he was naturally geeky and Charles Cottier played that part with ease. But now they have made the character more like the rest of the male character... but the acting just isn't matching up with this change. He did (and continues to) do well with everything connected to the crash and the scenes between the siblings are spot on everytime. But whenever there is a scene between April & Dex? Or Dex talking about April? It almost feels like they are both trying to outact each other for the geekiest/kookyiest/awkwardiest award.

[Jen]

Dex will let April win the wedding battle - but really, Dex is biding his time. She gets the wedding he gets to name the kids and Dex has been sitting on Skye for almost a decade. Ever since he watches Star Wars for the first time and realised that was the world he wanted to live in. So a few years down the line after Skye is born they have a son, and Dex also wins the naming lottery. His choice? Luke

[Jen]

April and Dex are the pair that I have shipped most intensely in all my years watching the show. They are also the only pair that have actually got their Happily Ever After. (The only ones that came close were Robbie and Tasha, but even then there was surprise!wedding suprirse!unwanted-pregnancy, so there's that. I've also held a flame for Mattie/Lucas and Belle/Drew but they were not endgame ships.)

Do I want an April and Dex Take Paris spin-off where April tries to build a relationship with her father and pass medical school, while Dex keeps getting lost in the city and can't ask for directions because he doesn't speak French - or rather, the only French he knows is all the dirty phrases April teaches him during sex, because you know she total does, and Indi ends up staying with them over the holidays and they have their first white Christmas together? Of course I do. I'm planning it all out in my head. I want this with the fire of a thousand burning suns. But I'm also content with the way the story ended. I, as a fan, am completely satisfied and it's not often you get to say that. So, I don't need any more; I just want them to be together forever and be happy.

The End.

[Jezz]

Goodbye to both characters, but it's Dex that I'm going to miss the most out of the two

[Red Ranger 1]

Pretty much the moment April and Dexter abruptly went from barely knowing each other to being joined at the hip, I said that they'd only been paired up because they joined the show in the same week and so they'd probably leave at the same time as well.And frankly, I think I've been proved right and that's one reason why they never felt like a believable couple.The frustrating thing is it could have worked if the show had actually been interested in exploring what April and Dexter would have been like as a couple.But instead it felt like their starting point was "Let's have a cute and adorable innocent couple who will stay together long term" and they picked the characters as an after-thought.It was a square peg being forced into a round hole and the more they forced it the more damage they did to them.At best they were a poor man's Robbie and Tasha, at worst they were a classic example of how to ruin two characters who once showed promise by refusing to admit they'd been paired up with the wrong person.It was made all the more frustrating by the usual attempts to "prove" they were Meant To Be by having them constantly break up and then drift back together again, which meant in practise that they were briefly allowed to flourish on their own(and often put in relationships that worked much better and had better build up)only to be smothered by more meaningless fluff.

It is nice to see a couple get a happy ending once in a while and there have been far worse couples in recent years.But having only got as far as the engagement in the UK, which was bad enough, the prospect of having to spend the first few weeks of the return watching endless childish and sappy scenes of this twee and annoying couple planning a wedding despite acting like they should still be in primary school does not fill me with excitement.The only real positive is that at least once it's over they have the decency to leave.