Photo: © Channel 5 Source: Digital Spy
The only things that seemed to be happening in Neighbours last week all revolved around Scarlett, and I’m not sure how I feel about this story line. I’m writing this having only seen Monday to Wednesday’s episodes, and Stalky Scarlett has really been dominating all the goings-on on Ramsay Street so far. Even story lines which I didn’t think had anything to do with her, like the hidden camera plot, have ended up circling back to her.
Caught in the middle of all of it is poor, oblivious Ned. He cannot resist any opportunity to act like a knight in shining armour, and Scarlett seems to have been able to see that in him from a mile away, and now she’s reaping the fruits of all her evil labour by finally getting steamy with Ned. Literally steamy, because he was in the bath at the time.
Incidentally, did anyone else find the bath scene really creepy? Having recently had the conversation that they were just going to be friends, Scarlett waltzed into the bathroom while Ned was in the bath, to help him because he was one shoulder down after the motorbike incident.
Now, I have a pretty standard number of close friends, and I can count on literally one finger how many of those friends I would allow to be in the bathroom with me while I was in the bath. I know Ned and Scarlett slept together once already, so she’s seen it all before, but it’s so weird that after telling her he wasn’t interested in being any more than friends, Ned just patted the bubbles to make sure they covered his gentleman’s agreements, and was otherwise completely fine with her being there.
Just two friends doing regular friend things. Photo: © Channel 5 Source: Digital Spy
Just for clarity, I am absolutely not averse to more scenes involving Ned in the bath, I just feel like it’s important to throw that out there. More bath scenes would be perfectly agreeable.
Anyhow, back to Scarlett.
Half the street is starting to piece things together and get suspicious of her now. Yashvi had absolutely no time for her already, Bea has been suspicious for a while, and now Paul and Amy are also very much in the anti-Scarlett camp. It looks from the promo clips like this is all going to come to a head around Halloween, so we don’t have long to wait to find out what sort of crazy she’s about to unleash.
As a sidebar, I read that Christie Whelan Browne, who plays Scarlett, has been the victim of some fairly vicious comments about her appearance online, which is decidedly not cool. She’s an actress playing a role, and while it’s fine to dislike her character, it’s mean and childish to make negative comments about the actress. I want Neighbours fans to be better than this.
Trolls aside, I think my main problem with this story line is that it all feels quite reminiscent of Nanny Alice. I know her scheme was motivated by different reasons and had a different end game (although I’m not actually sure where Scarlett is headed with all this yet), but having a woman with ulterior motives worming her way into the street seems all too familiar.
I don’t think it helps that, like Alice, we’ve known that Scarlett was up to no good right from the beginning, when we saw her editing her stalker scrapbook in Harold’s. Maybe if we’d found out about her gradually, like the residents of Ramsay Street, there would have been a bit more tension.
Even with the lack of tension, I’m intrigued to see what Scarlett has in store for Ned, and if it involves him getting his top off again, then that’s perfectly fine with me. Just saying…
