2024 Season - UK Episode Discussion

[H&Alover]

An abrupt ending to Leah & Justin's honeymoon, he understandably blew up when he found why the van had been impounded, another nail in Valerie's coffin. Yes it was harsh sending Valerie packing and a surprise it was Leah but Theo is her nephew and I hope I don't  sound stereotypical but Leah and Theo are of Greek extract and they do tend to up the family first thing.   She did take the news about it more calmer than I thought and didn't blame Justin that much for keeping it quite.   I think, though don't know of course, Leah felt betrayed by Valerie  which may have been another reason why she asked her to leave/told her to go.   OK the clinic Valerie was in may not have been the one best suited to her needs.  I don't think it was a rehab clinic was it, Leah wasn't  an addict to anything and Valerie was a voluntary patient.   Leah, Justin and Theo, especially Theo,  are too close to Valerie to give her the  help she needs, but could have helped her find somewhere else first. They could until then let her stay in that motel.     I didn't even know she had a car!   Kirby came round to Valerie's way of thinking - not the drugs side - and she was the first one to come down on her.  Though of course we could have all been led astray and it is a game she has played before.   

Stevie's stalker was real then, not something/someone she had made up!   I did get the impression Cash wandering around was spooking Stevie more than the thought of a possible stalker being there would have.   It was crap security, as according to him, no-one asked who he was, or searched him.    

How come Roo has been able to see Poppy and Sonia, when did she get special dispensation? 

 

18 hours ago, Red Ranger 1 said:

And yet there seem to be far more people saying they want rid of Bethany because they don't like her voice.

Amazing what folks complain about -  so trivial - don't like the way they dress is another one.

[Foellfan]

22 hours ago, Red Ranger 1 said:

Yes. In fact, I think, in general, soap audiences tend to be a lot harder on female characters who behave badly than male characters,

Perhaps but equally they take can a storyline deemed serious for a woman but if the man suffers the same thing it's seen as a big joke or they'll get over it which isn't right either. As Eastenders Sonia/Reiss fertility storyline pointed out.

Sonia cant concieve = Audience going awww poor Sonia needs a baby.

Reiss (her boyfriend) has fertility isssues = Audience going Hahahahahaha Reiss isn't maa-an, he can't make her pregnant, what a joke.

Petty but that's soapies generally I think sometimes.

With Valerie for example, her type are 10 a penny, she isn't likable because of her petulant attitude and it's everybody else's fault but mine spiel. I think Leah has got to put her family first not some random she knew for a week or two who would ultimately cause them nothing but grief. Also, I think Valerie hadn't hit that rock bottom yet that tends to be the turning point, until you get there help is pointless because you still can kid yourself you're in control hence the 'I need a family to be clean', it's an illusion not a cure unfortunately.

[CaptainHulk]

So Valerie's put her hands up, eh?

Theo, you do *have* a problem.

John, don't get discouraged; Maybe someone will have a Baywatch themed wedding; We'll be ready, Never you fear

[Red Ranger 1]

Some terrible Home and Away logic at work here: Theo says the drugs are his and the response is that they can't just take his word for it so they're charging everyone, but now that Valerie's said they're hers, everyone's off the hook apart from the poor guest character that we're apparently not meant to care about (including Theo apparently, even though he was the one that paid for the drugs with stolen money and took some of them).I'm afraid I continue to be disgusted with Leah and Justin.Leah's speech about "sometimes you have to cut people off or they'll break you" might have had a whiff of credibility if she'd made any attempt at all to help Valerie, rather than just kicking her out in their first conversation after she found out about her troubles: No-one even suggested finding a support group or drug counsellor for her. We were apparently meant to disagree with Theo's tirade but he was 100% right: People gave Leah help and support with her issues, they gave it to Justin when he had drug problems, and Brody before him, they're giving it to Theo now, why is Valerie the only one deemed unworthy of help aside from some playground-level "She started it"? I even accept Theo being the priority: He did seem even more dependent than Valerie at one point, and despite saying he'd quit, he still found excuses to go back there. But what are they going to do when he gets better (as he almost certainly will)? Will it dawn on them then that "Oh, maybe we should at least try and do the same for that poor Valerie girl we just threw to the wolves"? Or will it be a case of "Valerie who?"

Talking of terrible Home and Away logic, we now have the back-offscreen Sarge leaving it to Rose to decide whether or not to charge her friends.She's kind of in a no-win situation here: Either she pins trumped up charges on them or she looks weak for letting them off the hook. It doesn't help that, while objectively I think it'd be over the top to charge them, Mali and Dana have acted like such brats that a part of me wants Rose to lay charges just to see how they react. But no doubt she'd be portrayed as the bad guy if she did. I thought some of Bree's advice was pretty poor as well, and then Xander goes blabbing it to the biggest blabbermouth in town (yes, even bigger than John) after being told to keep it to himself.

I'm not sure why Roo would need special permission to visit Poppy, H&Alover: She's back with her mother, who Roo bonded with and supported while she was in the Bay, so it's up to Sonia if she wants to keep contact.

7 hours ago, Slade said:

As an aside, I got an email notification earlier this morning that the image sharing site I was signed up to has disabled my account.  I'd completely forgotten about that.  Turns out it's because you now have to pay to store images.  The only reason why I joined it was because if you wanted to have an Avatar on the forum back in the day, you had to link to an external image sharing platform.  The good old days.  Now you just upload the image directly from your machine.

Yes, the same thing happened to my account last year. They kept sending me e-mails trying to get me to sign up for a paid account until they finally twigged I was ignoring them.Most of the important stuff is on my hard-drive these days anyway, and it was increasingly hard to get images back off the site after I'd stored them there.

[CaptainHulk]

While seeing Mali cop something for obstruction/collusion/whateverion would be justified, I *don't* think I could stick weeks of him moaning about it giving Rose death stares everytime they bump into each other and Summer Bay IS a town where you sneeze at Salt, you could hear it at Summer Bay House!

*makes silly Rewind sound* When Leah went on about drugs, My mind ran to Alexi's 2007 visit, that did for their relationship (since mended), which nearly got VJ killed.

[pembie]

I did agree with Theo Leah running around with a knife like a horror movie villain was and is worse and lets face it funnier to  Valerie having a drug problem Leah was unhinged haha Very silly reasoning of Leah who has just thrown your so called friends to the wolves 

[CaptainHulk]

Xander kissing Dana  made met hink of that episode of Nelson kisses Lisa and his internal monologue is "This oughta shut her up!"

Yay, a Win for John. Kinda.

Edited June 7 by CaptainHulk

[H&Alover]

Well of course they -  Rose and companion - couldn't have taken Theo's word for the drugs being his, Rose may have believed it as she knows them, but not her companion who no doubt would have dobbed her into Callan if she hadn't nicked them all.   Eden, Kirby and Theo were innocent but the drug dealer isn't. 

Valerie must have been very convincing when she turned herself in that 'they' have dropped the  charges.  Leah 'kicking' her out did do some good then, maybe this is what she needed to get herself together.   Brody had to go to a rehab clinic as Justin and Tori couldn't help him at home and she is a doctor, Justin had to check in to that clinic when he had his anger management issues and didn't he go into rehab when he had his drug problem? True  Leah's problem wasn't drug related but it did come on from a traumatic event which she hid until  she snapped.  The families couldn't help as they are/were too close to give objective help.

Callan has really dropped Rose in at the deep end by 'letting' her decide whether to charge Mali and Harper for not revealing  they went to see  Tane  without letting the police know. Luckily, I guess for her, they brought him and Poppy back with no trouble.  What would the charges be? If he'd been doing his job in the first place instead of letting Rose handle it all and she did a good job as she could relate to the locals.  She is in between a rock and a hard place, does she do her job by the book and charge them or trust her judgement and let them off? It won't look good for Harper as she got accused  of harbouring  a fugitive when she hid Dana at Irene's, even if those charges were dropped. Dana may be a real pain at times but she's willing to fight for her. 

Theo to give him credit did go and apologise to Remi and I was glad to see   the police  did respect Remi's and I'm guessing the others equipment by not ripping it apart.  Remi did get him to admit he has a problem with drugs though he's not an addict and in  a kind of brave way he called Bree.    I thought Bree gave  good advice but as it's not in her field of expertise she pointed  him in the right direction.  That is the problem with living with a cop as they do tend to bring their work home with them but maybe Rose shouldn't have said anything so Xander didn't blab to Dana.  But he did silence her with that kiss - about time. 

OK maybe John was getting carried away with his Celebrant business but Roo telling him to sort out the parking  subs which  is her job but she's getting caught up in seeing Poppy and mum and looking into fostering.   He did give good advice there as he has been there, done that, got the T-shirt even if the ones he Gina and Marilyn looked after were older he did have some experience.   Then we got to see the fun side of him trying to sneak photos off Irene's phone to promote his 'new' business.  

 

 

 

 

[Foellfan]

Didn't like Theo's tantrum one bit, if he hates his aunt's attitude so much go back to Mama, Bucko, don't worry they'll soon be another thirst trap I'm sure.

Valerie was merely another patient, it was the therapist's mainly that helped Leah; also the level of Valerie's problem it's obvious being coddled at 'home' would be just a gateway to her staying addicted because I don't think Leah especially wouldn't be strong enough to deal with her tantrums, she'd give in. Valerie sounds as if she needs a secure drug rehab to be deprogrammed and also give her structure to stay clean, be it through councilling and/or a weaning program. Leah did say one thing which I think is very true when she said about no matter how much you want to save someone, it has to come from them to actually work. Yes, handing herself in was the least she could do but, until she is at least honest about whether she wants to recover or not I think it's better that she would stay away, especially for Theo as he's only ever really defined himself by his relationships with others not just girlfriends, being Dad's victim etc too, doesn't actually know much about himself yet.

I'm glad Remi did give Theo a talking to, it's all very well cooing ooh poor baby but his choices affected others who, given the choice, wouldn't want anything to do with that sort of habit and puts them at risk.

Aw, John, he looked so pleased when he got Alf's compliment and Justin and Leah's testimonial...though he really does need to learn boundaries! 

[Red Ranger 1]

Alf's episode count this week:Three.

Every time Leah and Justin bring up the subject of Valerie, I think maybe they're going to restore my faith in them and behave like actual human beings towards her, and every time they just disgust me further. That whole "No regrets" scene was utterly sickening. It's like they think that if they say self-serving things like "It was the right thing to do" and "We did everything we could" often enough, then they and we will believe it. They did absolutely nothing for her. They've refused to give her any help or support, they've still refused even after she's tried to do the right thing by going to the police, and they've even stopped Theo from helping her. I would love to know exactly what Leah's justification for writing Valerie off as someone who can't be helped because she doesn't want to be is: That two minute conversation they had on the subject? There was no offer for her to stay with them as long as she got proper help, so I don't know how they can say that she wouldn't have done it. Just a cold "Go back to the clinic or don't, but you're not staying here."

And in the blue corner we have Tane and his cheer squad of enablers and excusers. Roo was absolutely right to have a go and Harper's "You're making a complex situation simple" was utterly pathetic. It's not complicated at all, Tane felt he had some divine right to be the one that looked after Poppy and didn't care who he had to hurt to make it happen. And yeah, he belatedly did the right thing after getting a big dose of reality, but he doesn't deserve any praise for reuniting Poppy and Sonia when it would have happened earlier if he hadn't been so selfish. I'm glad Roo had a go at Mali as well, given he's been even more insufferable than Tane over the last two weeks, but sadly it didn't last long and we soon had Alf, who we were obviously supposed to agree with, giving a lecture about how it's pointless saying who's to blame. Right, so is he going to give Leah and Justin the same speech? Is he going to tell them that Theo and Valerie are equally deserving of their help, rather than them blaming everything on Valerie and dogmatically keeping Theo away from her? No, I don't think so. For all the claims on here that women get given an easier ride than men, it seems like the men are the ones getting a lot more leeway here. And while it's probably more to do with how long the actors are under contract for than gender, it still leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth.

Mind you, they're always willing to redress the balance by putting the boot into John. The episode can't just end it with him getting a compliment from Alf and a testimonial from Leah and Justin, we have to get the ludicrous final note of Irene stealing his phone to stop him sending Justin a thank you text. How much of Justin's time would reading it have taken, two seconds? If he's really that desperate for quiet, he could just ignore it like all the others. It just came across as petty bullying.

Dana was campaigning hard to be the most aggravating person in the episode to the point of actually making me feel sorry for Mali, who was at least trying to be the grown-up for once, so she definitely deserved everything Xander said to her.Somehow though, her qualified apology has led to her getting what she wants and Xander realising he doesn't really see her as a little sister...or at least I hope he doesn't! I quite liked Irene giving Rose a sympathetic ear, although as with Xander's "You're practically family (but not enough for me to go to your wedding)", I had to think hard to remember they do have a distant connection (which the show is determined not to mention). I'm glad Rose ultimately did the professional thing, assessed the facts and came to a sensible conclusion...and if Callan doesn't like it, then he should have done the job himself. I wish Mali had stopped treating Rose like the bad guy without her having to do something he approved of, but I guess he got there in the end.