1995 Episode Discussion

[Chair]

The casting agents obviously had a limited budget that year or the actors who could have taken Travis's place were demanding too much money! 

[Skylover]

Haha, on a separate note I keep seeing the mic dangling above the actors heads' in certain scenes, is this a new thing to 1995 or has it always happened on occasion and I've just never noticed??

ETA: After the computer is stolen which holds all the information about who has bought a concert ticket, Shannon asks Jack if 'John Palmer' has paid for his ticket yet

[Dan F]

1 hour ago, Edward Skylover said:

Haha, on a separate note I keep seeing the mic dangling above the actors heads' in certain scenes, is this a new thing to 1995 or has it always happened on occasion and I've just never noticed??

It has happened on a number of occasions in previous years - back in the day you never would have noticed, as the old CRT TVs always had a bit of overscan which meant around 5% of the image was cut off around the edges.

Whilst monitors in the studio would usually have compensated for this when filming, they would have known that any little mic drops or edge of sets that were visible would likely never be seen on-screen by the audience at home, so it often wasn't an issue. Of course once LCD screens and the like came in, which do show the whole image, it was a different story

[Skylover]

Thanks Dan. How do you know all that info!

Just watched Selina drinking the can with a wasp/bee in it. After Angel's plane crash that would be my next memory of Home and Away from when I was a child. Unlike the plane crash, the wasp memory is a lot more vivid. Pretty traumatic for a 5 year old child to see that! I presume this was aired in 1996.

About to watch the aftermath episode, I wonder if I'll have any more memories!

ETA: Funny how things change, I know that my recollections of H&A as a child were the characters of Irene, Donald, Selina, Fisher, Marilyn, Pippa and Sally. I have no memory of Jack who is now my favourite character from the early years.

[Dan F]

42 minutes ago, Edward Skylover said:

Thanks Dan. How do you know all that info!

The About Me tab in my profile might give an inkling

The Selina/bee episode would have aired in the UK in January 1996

[beau_t]

I agree about Kelly - her struggle (and pill popping) over Elizabeth's request to die seemed to come out of nowhere and disappear just as quickly. Other than that, I quite like her integration into the Bay, but that story and the "cliffhanger" of her yelling at Steven that she couldn't cope, just seemed really jarring.

I don't remember her being so involved in the Dodge story but it's nice to see her sticking up for Stevo and helping him - moreso than Pippa, Ailsa and other characters who should be doing everything in their power to shun him. Why does Ailsa allow him in the Diner? Why does anyone give him the time of day? And yes he's very camp - almost panto. It's still an enjoyable storyline but his acting and the unbelievable writing of why nobody seems to question why he would come back to the Bay in the first place gets on my nerves a bit. I remember posting a few times during his 1989 stint that I believed he had a "thing" for Stevo and I still think there's some subtext there.

[Old H&A Fan]

43 minutes ago, beau_t said:

Ailsa and other characters who should be doing everything in their power to shun him. Why does Ailsa allow him in the Diner? Why does anyone give him the time of day?

Perhaps because it's not their business to carry out Stevo's grudge, fight his battles for him? You did notice the way Alf shuns him, telling him to pack his bags and get out of town, and refusing to give him a job. And Michael asking him to leave the caravan but Dodge says he is legally allowed to stay. And Shannon going on to Jack about him "sleazing around" on the beach.

[beau_t]

14 minutes ago, Old H&A Fan said:

Perhaps because it's not their business to carry out Stevo's grudge, fight his battles for him? You did notice the way Alf shuns him, telling him to pack his bags and get out of town, and refusing to give him a job. And Michael asking him to leave the caravan but Dodge says he is legally allowed to stay. And Shannon going on to Jack about him "sleazing around" on the beach.

As usual you only quote the part of a post you can argue with, and completely ignore the part of my post a couple of sentences later that actually answers this question (just like you ignored Dan F's point a couple of pages back).

[Red Ranger 1]

So, after a massive 25 episode catch-up I'm finally up to date and struggling to remember what happened.Well, we lost Nelson, for good this time: Apparently he wanted to forget about Summer Bay so much that he never came back, and I believe that he only gets mentioned once in passing by Sally in 1998.(Mind you, we only hear that third hand from Sally via Wendy, who's not the most reliable...)There seem to have been a few timing errors recently, none more so than Shannon visiting Nelson in hospital in daylight when all the surrounding scenes are night time.I don't know if Kate Ritchie had exams or whatever but Sally's absence from his departure was very keenly felt, even if there was a garbled line about her going away, although their last scene of her holding his hand while his bandages were changed was a decent moment enough to go out on.And it did mean that Sally's storyline with Jack gets stalled and we have to have another couple of episodes of her being angry with him when she gets back, even though in plot terms there's probably more of Don blaming him.(I guess there's also an argument that while Rad might have crashed the car and started the bushfire without him, Nelson being injured wouldn't have happened if Jack hadn't been in the car.)Still, Don's suddenly having coffee with Shannon so I guess at least he forgot he hated her...You know something?I think ITV cut the scene of Jack's locker being firebombed because I can distinctly remember that episode ending on Don's "Atrocious spelling."(And, as excellently researched in this thread, that was the last episode ITV showed in 1995, taking a break for just over a week for Christmas during which we got the Shane and Angel documentary and repeats of their wedding and Sophie giving birth, before returning with Episode 1780 on Tuesday 2nd January, meaning we were now an extra day out of synch with the original blocks.Also, I find myself realising I missed an awful lot of episodes during this period because my parents were trying to limit my TV watching in my GCSE year...)

Selina's birthday started off sensibly then seemed to veer back and forth between sensible and absurd.(And wasn't she already seventeen when Murdoch was around?)There's a good point that she shouldn't have to not celebrate because of something that wasn't her fault, but then it turns into a bizarre story about her trying to find out what Curtis has bought her (why not just wait until he gives it to her?), then it turns into the party from hell with none of her friends turning up and Curtis and Jack going off to pick a fight with a couple of forgettable characters when she begs them to stay...Give me strength.Oh well, she's got a near death experience coming up.

The Elizabeth storyline was well-acted but thinking about it, it seemed a bit of a cop-out.We get a lot of challenging scenes of her asking Kelly to help her die, Selina struggling to understand her mindset (with Shannon curiously being more understanding again), Elizabeth making a failed suicide plan...and then, instead of it being dragged out six months as indicated, she just dies.Are we meant to assume it was because she lost the will to live?Emotional but doesn't really address the issues involved.

After months of Shane being trodden on, it was a triumphant moment for him to finally take a stand against Angel over the pregnancy...but it can't last so soon the entire town's telling him to see her point of view. I found myself less sympathetic towards her here than the first time round, even if I could kind of see her dilemma, she was considering ending her pregnancy over something that might not happen.(Incidentally, on the weird side, I keep forgetting to mention Angel's slightly psychic moment where she seems to sense something's wrong with Dylan.

 

I believe she does the same when Shane has his accident in the finale.)

On the other hand, the Rosses v Stewarts thing, this time round I can see both sides.Ultimately, they're all trying to do what's right for their family.Michael's response is a bit over the top, but Alf's being naïve to think it won't have any effect on the caravan park at all and the points Michael has made are quite valid.

Oh yes, and Dodge is back.I find the characterisation of him is interesting:To me, he comes across as someone who's just never grown up.He acted pretty young for his age in 1989, now he's an adult and he acts in exactly the same way.He's got no sense of responsibility (if something goes wrong, he sulks and says it was all someone else's fault), he's got no ambition (five years inside and the best thing he can think of to do with his life is to annoy Steven for a laugh), and even when he's trying to charm people he does it in this kind of whiney little boy lost voice.It is also hard to see what he's aiming for, especially knowing what the endgame is.If he was trying to set Steven up over the computers, why didn't he make sure he was caught instead of giving him a bit of a fright and then ending up hoist on his own petard?Not that Steven was any more intelligent in hiding the computer instead of telling Hale straightaway.

 

And Dodge's later actions make his framing Steven for his own murder completely pointless as well.Is he just toying with him or does he get bored and decide to do something else?

His revealing that he knew Nathan had me guessing him as Murdoch's killer if not straightaway then certainly by later that evening when I'd had a think about it.The harmonica might seem more significant if Murdoch had played it more than once though, then we could have done without Irene's info-dump.It doesn't help that this is twice in a row that Irene's been gushing over someone who's Obviously Evil.Loved Hale's Columbo-esque "Just one more thing" to Irene and I think that does justify last year's comment about Irene having been a murder suspect twice before.Dodge comments on meeting Hale again, which pretty much removes any doubts that he was the police officer we saw in 1989.We actually did get some very brief Sally/Dodge interaction although you wouldn't think they knew each other.I guess Sally's got more on her mind at the moment and she was basically vindicated in 1989 so hasn't really got any issues left.And I do think Kelly and Travis are slotting in well, although early days yet.

And Part 1 of Shannon's fluid sexuality.The first thought is that it's a lot more daring than the current show (the near kiss between Mandy and Toni was a surprise) but it's far from perfect even if this is 1995. There's a touch of Being Abused Makes You Gay about Shannon's confusion, which now seems to be explicit, and Mandy flirting heavily with Shannon while apparently in a relationship with Toni seems to be leaning towards Gays Are Promiscuous. I've heard it said that their closeness at this point was retconned later on but nope, it's all there (even if Shannon's "Would there be a problem if we were?" is a lot more light-hearted than fan lore suggests).Pippa tries to strike a balance between open-minded and protective, while Selina seems to have a huge problem with it which isn't going to change any time soon...

[Blaxland 89]

Just out of interest. Does anyone know what Kelly Dingwall (dale kelly) is up to nowadays? Is he famous for anything other than dodge?