2022 Season - UK Episode Discussion

[pembie]

2 hours ago, Red Ranger 1 said:

So, yes, we've now got a proper look at Heather's birth certificate (which spells her surname differently to the end credits, do these people not talk to each other?!), revealing Marilyn as her mother.Which is a pretty big "Huh?" The date for Heather's birth is just a few weeks before Marilyn returned to Summer Bay in 1995, except she was meant to have been married to Philip during her time away (and we know she married him because Bobby was at the wedding) and when she came back she told some big sob story to Alf about how Philip had cheated on her and claimed he'd rung her wanting to get back together but she'd chosen to stay with the people that cared about her...which I guess we're now meant to assume was a pack of lies, since she was apparently off having a baby with someone else only to promptly walk out on them and spend the next 25 years playing the role of the tragic childless woman and trying to take children from other families to make up for it. So...yeah, Marilyn's a sociopath. It seems very unlikely she named Heather and George after her parents given that she couldn't stand them (and neither could anyone else who met them) and dubbed them "horrible people" that she wished she'd never met. I mean, she might have done it out of some sort of deluded attempt at sentiment but...would she? She said she liked the name but Heather claimed her father named her.

Okay, that's the continuity out of the way, what about the storyline? Well, to be fair, Marilyn actually came up with information beyond "It's in the cards" and "She's bad news" and Roo didn't seem to notice.Marilyn showed her the photo, even if she did dodge Roo's questions about who it was, and pointed out Heather had been telling different stories to different people (...not sure how Marilyn knows that but it's true), and Roo just kept on insisting Marilyn wasn't making sense even though she finally was.Almost.

What else? Cash continues to try and go from 0 to 100 and back again.I guess at least he left the house, but he still seems convinced he's just days away from returning to work.It seems he's okay with hanging out with Xander, so it's just Rose he has a problem with? After her concern about being the strong one a few weeks back, Felicity actually did a pretty good job here.I'm not really interested in the bikies being after revenge but it is good that Rose is getting involved.

Ok after reading your post about Heather my brain is baffled but it’s very far fetched is what I’m taking from it and they have destroyed Marilyn’s character of turned her into a weirdo 

I thought the bikers gang story would be over now having Tex gone and leader shot 

[c120701]

I think that’s it, you could fit the timing in with the continuity, but what it does to Marilyn as a character is it takes this very open hearted, honest, good character who would never have been able to keep something a secret for this long and turns her into a rather impressive liar, I think if we found out that she’d confided in Mr Stewart or Irene long ago it’d make more sense as her longing for a child does play into the story, but there have been so many times her story has taken her to a place you thought she’d break down and reveal this to someone and that’s the part I’m struggling most with, Marilyn would have told someone and it seems she didn’t.

[H&Alover]

No way is Marilyn a sociopath, she is far too caring a person for that.  She left in 1992 and it may have been a brief marriage and then she took this job at the Frazers.  Maz, being Maz would keep it quiet she'd feel too ashamed.  She didn't 'walk out' on them she was 'asked' to leave which is the story Heather gave Roo when she spun it as her tale so that bit must be true.      Heather does tell different tales to different people - when Marilyn first confronted her at her van, she sneeringly asked "Who do you think? Then Nik came to the door and she immediately pretended Marilyn was having a go at her for no reason and acting all innocent.    We did see a bit more of the goodies in Heahter's shoe box - why is it a shoebox - a toy koala - was that something Marilyn left for her?  Marilyn showed Roo the photo of Heather, but she didn't tell her who it was or show her what was written on the back did she?  What story did the Frazer's give her and when, she's in her late 20's   so could it only have been recently?

Cash certainly put Felicity through the wringer by vanishing for most of the day, but it might be a bit of Karma as she must have put him through the same thing when she was a wild child.   Good that Xander and Rose found him - he's still determined to leave the Parata house, at least he understood Tane and by extension Nik's reason why.  Where is he going to go, not the Diner flat despite Xander's offer, no way could he manage those stairs, he's finding it hard enough to walk on level ground. 

Would it have raised suspicions when Tane arrived at the cop shop, he was asking a valid question about the court case. 

Natch we see the message flagged up on Rose's pc before she does.  Obviously you don't know bikies that well pembie, no way would they let their leader getting shot and by a cop go that easily.  They'd have contacts in other gangs which is what Rosie's contact told her they were tracking.  

 

[Red Ranger 1]

Alf's episode count this week:None! Did I miss a line saying he's gone away again? It's hard to imagine he wouldn't be involved in Marilyn's storyline otherwise.Since Alf's last return from Merimbula, he seems to have gone from hardly missing an episode to seeming like he's part-time.

You can dress it up however you want but Marilyn's had 27 years to give a damn about her daughter and she hasn't, preferring to live her fantasy life in Summer Bay and pretend she doesn't exist.If Heather's comments yesterday were accurate, it seems she's only been a short drive away.Once again, Marilyn ignores anything that doesn't fit her brand, that's too adult or difficult for her to deal with, just like she ran away and reinvented herself when Byron died, to the point of not letting Donald visit her when he thought she was dying.27 years of lies and now they're catching up with her.No doubt the show will try and stick to the myth of "lovely bubbly Marilyn" and pretend that Heather is somehow making her act like this.But I think it's all her: Marilyn's a deeply unpleasant person at times.She pulls a "sorry, not sorry" on Nikau, only giving him muffins as an excuse to harass him and then pretending that apologising before she's nasty to him somehow counts.She's treating her friends like dirt even though she's the one that's been lying to them for decades, for as long as she's known them in the case of everyone except Irene and Roo (and Alf, if he hadn't vanished in a puff of smoke). So, no sympathy from me here.She's not the victim in all this.Maybe she was 27 years ago, maybe she wasn't, it doesn't reflect very well on her either way.(If, as some people are assuming, she was the scarlet woman trying to break up Heather's father's marriage...aww, diddums.)

After initially seeming pretty indifferent about someone trying to kill him, Cash finally got energised enough to ask questions, even if it's putting Rose in a difficult position again.(She hasn't told anyone she let Xander hang around the police station looking at confidential files either!)Oh well, at least she's on the case now! I'm afraid Irene annoyed me again, butting into Xander and Rose's business when this time it was something she really did need to keep out of. Fortunately she let herself be fobbed off by Xander telling her half the story.

[pembie]

While I don’t agree with you Red that Marilyn is a horrible person Ziggy is far worse hahaBut she really hasn’t done much for quite awhile At the same time do I really care she’s being tourtred no not really I like Heather causing trouble she got that bad girl thing going as well with Nik that I would enjoy myself haha Everyone’s needed this boost of excitement in their lives it’s been a very dull place without Heather

[H&Alover]

People do tend to bury things and pretend they didn't happen as it was traumatic for them, how do we know she hasn't given a damn? Really can't see Marilyn as a scarlet woman though.   Irene hid the fact she had a son for many years and it only emerged when Tommy - the guy who was grooming Bella - said it could be their secret and that triggered her memory of what her uncle said to her when he raped her.  Going back even further Alisa had a secret daughter, which she didn't tell Alf about for decades. 

Heather has a had a long time to plot her revenge or whatever it is she has planned for Marilyn.   It did look like Marilyn was going to tell Leah about Heather - not a spoiler - just my feeling. 

Why is Ziggy a horrible person? Haha????????

I can see Rose's dilemma about telling or not telling Cash about the contract on his head, by telling him he can be alert for anyone new turning up in the bay and warning Tane, Nik and Felicity. But on the other side it would rack up his stress levels.  Very clever and subtle messages sent by the bikers, shows we shouldn't underestimate them.    Wouldn't this Task Force let Cash know anyway, put him in a safe house?   Xander is good at keeping his mouth shut.  

 

 

[atrus]

Well, I'm not going to dive into the continuity and plausibility or lack thereof of Marilyn having a secret child during her nineties break, because I don't remember any of it well enough/at all. However, what I would observe is the show's tendency in recent years to have villainous children appear out of the woodwork for the older cast members to cause short-term shocks and melodrama, and it's starting to get a bit samey. We had Irene and Mick, Martha and Kieran, and now Marilyn seems to be the latest victim of this plot fetish. Not that I mind seeing family for these characters - on the contrary, we should be having far more of that - but do they always have to be evil or stalkers, or guest-stint antagonists of one form or another? Anyway, all that said, at least it's maintaining my attention which is more than can be said for most other storylines at present. Not surprised to see Marilyn's friends concluding that she's acting strangely, because she is, and now Heather's latched onto the fact she's had mental health issues recently I can see her milking it for all it's worth to play divide-and-rule. Other characters will no doubt develop a plot-mandated common-sense deficit to enable this behaviour - we've already seen Roo show an astounding lack of curiosity about why someone, Heather or otherwise, would stick a picture of a baby under the door with the words 'guess who?' written on the back. But hopefully Heather's evil genius won't be totally infallible and the mask will slip before she has a chance to set the Diner on fire/plant a bomb at the Caravan Park/dose Maz up with a repeat-prescription of organophosphates (delete as applicable). As for the whole question of whether any fate befalling Maz is richly deserved for having abandoned her child and lied about it to everyone - well, let's just wait till we hear her side of the story.

In other news... was Cash being told that he's got a bounty on his head really a discretionary matter? Rose was making out to Xander (who probably had no business being looped in at all, but I guess he was in the episode) that she didn't think it that important to let Cash know on the dubious grounds that he wasn't in a fit state to stave off any attempt on his life even if he was aware of it, the implication being that she therefore might as well not bother. But surely there's some kind of police procedure or obligation to make targets aware of any death threats they might be subject to? Anyway, fair play because she decided to act on the information in the end. Is it bad that I don't really care whether the bikies succeed right now?

[Red Ranger 1]

I think I'm less inclined to buy into "aww, poor Marilyn" because this feels like the culmination of behaviour stretching right back to 1995. She's had a long-standing obsession with children, first being so fixated on having a baby that she risked her health and deliberately got pregnant after being told she couldn't carry to term in a deluded belief it would somehow magically turn out all right, then getting over-involved with and proprietorial towards other people's children, with Nicole being the most extreme example.If I thought the show would recognise that, that they'd acknowledge Marilyn's psychologically damaged and has been behaving in an unhealthy manner where children are concerned for the last 25 years because she's trying to replace the child she's lost, I could get behind it.But the fact Heather's being positioned as a villain leaves me convinced that the show will try and pretend that Marilyn is kind and lovely and a friend to all living creatures and it's all everybody else's fault.She wasn't a child like Irene or in prison like Ailsa when she had her baby.She was a grown woman, albeit one that's never acted her age in her life.If she was going to run off back to Summer Bay, then I'm waiting for a decent explanation why, instead of trying to recreate her old pre-marriage pre-motherhood life as if the last three years had never happened, she couldn't have taken Heather with her, when she'd be surrounded by people like Alf and Pippa who'd want to help her out.Angel was a lot younger than her when she had to leave her child with his father and disappear from his life, and went back for him as soon as she was settled and able to be a mother to him.Marilyn was right there with her and apparently the "Oh yeah, I could do that" pin never dropped.

As for the actual episode today...well, it's handy for Heather that Marilyn fell asleep on the couch, otherwise she'd have just been wandering about downstairs with nothing to do.Nikau seems to have the tiny bit of suspicion, having observed Marilyn and Heather together and realised Heather's dodging his questions.

Not much else going on except Xander and Rose having the same conversation three or four times.Good that the DPP have bowed to sanity and given Nikau and Tane their court date.I don't necessarily think Rose is right but it's her choice and no big deal in the grand scheme of things, so I'm not sure Xander staging an intervention is necessary.

[Slade]

I've never really liked Marilyn.  I agree with the sentiments expressed about how she can be quite an unpleasant person, I remember how she was with John towards the end of their marriage and it was clear on Friday's episode how she switched on Nikau when he didn't give her what she wanted.  I felt the apology to him was bogus and I was sceptical when she apologised to him again today.  I'm surprised she hasn't figured out Heather is her daughter sooner given the story Roo told her about Heather getting pregnant and being forced to give up her baby.  I don't really think Heather's done anything that bad so whilst I would prefer if she would just tell her, I can see why Heather's adopting this particular approach now.  She just doesn't want to tell Marilyn.  She wants Marilyn to figure it out, think about it and really contemplate how she's acted over the past 20 plus years.  In a way she sort of wants to mean something to Marilyn.

Given the preview, I was actually disappointed Heather wasn't in Friday's episode.  The tutoring lessons were just an in, so now that Heather's plan is in full motion, as mentioned previously she has no desire to carry studying law but still has to keep up the pretence so she has an excuse to stay close to Marilyn and to avoid suspicion with Roo.  I'm curious to know her end game.  Marilyn figures out she's her mother then what?  I will say that Heather's childhood can't have been that good, else she wouldn't have bothered trying to even find Marilyn in the first place to presumably blame Marilyn for giving her up.

[H&Alover]

A couple of things - but firstly we actually saw inside the Stewart house - (a) When did Heather snatch that photo of herself back, Marilyn doesn't leave her bag unattended, (b) unless Marilyn left the door unlocked - as people do tend to in the bay I must admit - how did Heather get in and (c) how did she know where the larder/pantry was, pure luck there was a bottle of wine sitting there? 

You can't really count Martha as hiding Kieran as she hadn't been in Alf or Roo's lives for most of his life.   Actually in a bizarre twist she hid them from him.

Heather did deflect Nik's perfectly innocent question about if she had lived near the sea/coast, what does it matter where she lived before? 

 Marilyn did to her credit did apologise to Heather, but then when she asked how she knew about her recent mental problems Heather looked over at Roo & Leah when we know it was Nik who told her.  How is Heather manging to pay for things seeing as she isn't working, food, rent for the van, paying for Roo's tutoring.   She did another dodging the question job when Roo asked about her essay.

At the risk of getting boring - Marilyn didn't 'abandon' Heather, she didn't leave her by the side of the road. We know from what Heather has said when she was telling it as her story - the family made/persuaded her - to leave the baby with them. Whether they just kicked Marilyn out or paid her x amount of wages in lieu.  I'm thinking they are/were wealthy as she went to boarding school, is she still getting 'pocket' money from them but keeping quiet about it?

How did she track Marilyn down, what made her decide to go down the I'm studying law' route to get close to Roo who she must have somehow found out was close to Marilyn.  It does appear, well to me at least, that Heather does seem to be particularly to want to stir it up between Roo and Marilyn.   If she does want to get close to Marilyn why be so devious? 

Well, as we saw Marilyn does open up to Leah, Roo as we know does come across as overpowering at times and we have hated her for it, wanting to tell her "back off". I don't think it would help if Marilyn showed what Heather had written on the back of the photo as people don't see much real writing anymore, it's all emails. 

Rose, is I'm guessing, feels guilty about getting this commendation because of what happened to Cash.  I don't think any cop would want to be recognised   for a good bust if another cop got injured or even died.