Hello! I'm new here and would like some help with some unanswered questions :)

[Red Ranger 1]

7 hours ago, Sally Keating said:

"Therefore" does not belong in that sentence. You have absolutely no evidence to back that up other than a personal opinion on what is "likely" - and that itself is based  on nothing.

I did say probably...

7 hours ago, Sally Keating said:

So getting back on topic Red Ranger 1, rather than going round and round a rather tedious, monotonous point which nobody cares about Would you have liked to see Karen return while Sophie was still on screen, for example if Rebekah hadn't chosen to leave and was staying in the show, and if so what would you have liked to see transpire? Bearing in mind it doesn't have to fit with what we did see on screen.

I have to say, leaving the Sophie stuff aside, I do like that Karen was used to facilitate Blake's exit. Karen had left the show with an unfinished arc, or maybe more accurately, at least as an un-redeemed character. Even though when she returned she was still very broken, at least having Blake leave with her to help her, was a positive and uplifting ending for both of them. Also, they arrived in the show together as siblings who only had each other. So I feel like it was fitting for her to be the reason for his exit.

Also, what was with Alf's distrust and dislike of Karen when  she first came back? Was it just a retcon to add drama? Because I seem to remember he held no ill-will towards her when she went to court and in fact was hoping she'd come home.

Oh, what a difficult question.Or several questions.Well, I guess they could have had some sort of resolution between Sophie and Karen.The Karen we saw in 1991 and 1993 was in total denial, not at all bothered or sorry that a man was dead because of her on top of all the other damage she'd caused.Maybe meeting Sophie again, being forced to face the fact that she'd killed someone that people cared about and left a child without a father, would finally have cut through her self-absorbed exterior and made her realise she was wrong.Or maybe things would have played out the same way just with Sophie there and Karen still wouldn't have cared.

I guess there's a difference between viewing a storyline from a distance knowing the endpoint and being in the middle of it and seeing a character you like and had invested in get carted off to detention for manslaughter.Looking at it from the perspective of several decades later, perhaps the show needs a failure once in a while, to show that sometimes even the best parent figures in the world can't stop someone making the wrong choice.We saw Tom and Pippa's failure with Dodge and around the same time Michael and Pippa's failure with Tracey.Maybe Alf and Ailsa needed their equivalent but more so: While Dodge was already irredeemable before Pippa took him in, Karen came to the Stewarts a sweet girl and left a selfish criminal.In a show that often glamorises vulnerable teenage girls hooking up with bad boys, perhaps we needed to see the other side, that it ruined Karen's life, or at least had a negative impact on it, turning her into someone who Ailsa gloomily accepted was hardened and unrepentant and likely to spend the rest of her life in and out of jail.

And after her visit in 1993...she's still hardened, unrepentant and unredeemed.Maybe if you're looking at it with nostalgic memories of what she was like in 1990 you'll be able to feel sympathy for her.But if it's the first time you ever see Karen (as it was for me), all you see is someone who lies, manipulates, steals and hooks up with the town's worst elements...and gets rewarded for it.Blake going with her didn't really feel positive or uplifting, it felt like bad behaviour being rewarded, Blake chucking his life away and letting her drag him down with her when she was obviously a lost cause.It turned Blake into a jerk who dumps Fin with a cowardly letter after all the promises he'd made to her when they got back together and when he left.Moving them off to the city didn't resolve Karen's arc in any way, it just gave her more temptation and taught her she could get her own way by doing the wrong thing.The Karen that left was likely to end up back in jail as soon as Blake took his eye off the ball and the storyline didn't really do anything except get Blake off the show.

At which point...the show basically pretends it all never happened.From the latter half of 1993 onwards, it's as if all Karen's storylines after May 1991 never happened.All the characters that were hostile towards her suddenly like her again and everyone acts as though she was always a sweet girl.Well, I guess it's good for her if she did manage to turn her life around after all, but it doesn't stop us wondering about an off screen set-up where Blake and Sophie have a child together, name him after her dead boyfriend and Tamara is sat next to Auntie Karen at family gatherings trying to ignore the fact that she's the reason her father died before she was born.

The opinions expressed in this post are merely the opinions of the poster and do not in any way claim inside knowledge of the workings of the minds of flying elephants.

[Sally Keating]

I would say that Blake and Karen’s exit was in no way an exit that resolved everything, nor was it a happy ending, but more a hopeful one.

it was an exit of hope. And I quite like that.

Plus it tied in with how they came to the Bay - together. So in that respect it was kind of “full circle.” After all, they could have just written any random unfulfilling reason for Blake to leave.

I understand that if that’s the first time you had seen Karen you probably didn’t see it that way. And I do think it probably would have helped if they had shown just a glimmer that Karen was redeemable. 

They even did that with Tracy in her final episode IIRC. We saw a couple of very small glimpses that seemed genuinely sad that Pippa didn’t fight harder to get her to stay. 

I think even just showing one tiny glimpse of remorse or vulnerability would have helped make Blake’s exit to help her seem like a more positive one.

But I still think it was a hopeful exit.

[j.laur5]

I be watching 1988 episodes again and up to episode to  16 and have to admit show does feel bit dead and lifeless!. 

[Sally Keating]

The show takes a while to pick up a bit of pace.

[harrietjames]

9 hours ago, j.laur5 said:

I be watching 1988 episodes again and up to episode to  16 and have to admit show does feel bit dead and lifeless!. 

They nearly axed it - it didn't really work for the first few weeks.

[j.laur5]

I am actually starting to enjoy it now it has calm and simple feel to it. 

[j.laur5]

Its so hard to believe that Roo in the 80s and present day Roo are the same characters as Roo in present day is the most sane person in the bay!

[Summer's Bay]

On 2/2/2018 at 22:30, j.laur5 said:

Its so hard to believe that Roo in the 80s and present day Roo are the same characters as Roo in present day is the most sane person in the bay!

In my opinion that is too much of a change of character. Maybe Georgie Parker can’t play the old Roo and maybe old Roo can’t play new Roo. It’s all very bizarre.

 

 

 

When Frank return for his two stints, what was his relationship like with Alf?

[harrietjames]

4 hours ago, Summer's Bay said:

In my opinion that is too much of a change of character. Maybe Georgie Parker can’t play the old Roo and maybe old Roo can’t play new Roo. It’s all very bizarre

Adulthood makes a lot of difference to people - you don't notice it so much if you watch them grow up, but if you meet them again after a number of years it's very obvious

[Red Ranger 1]

I've always felt the way Roo is now is a natural progression of the character development she had during the 80s, when she made peace with Ailsa and Bobby and was trying to be a better person.I've long since stopped imagining Justine Clarke performing the current scripts but things like the relationship with Alf have always seemed very authentic.