*UK PACE*
Last week was one of those weeks on Neighbours where all the storylines seemed to revolve around people behaving terribly and making bad decisions, so there’s quite a lot to unpack.
Paul is Back to Being Trash
Paul has been like a bear with a sore head, complaining that he’s getting worse after the Flamingo Bar accident rather than better. He goes for his test results at the hospital, which all come back normal, but Paul is insisting that the doctors have missed something. He’s downright rude to Karl when he comes over to check up on him, and declares that he’s going to get a second opinion. Clive, David, and Karl are all in agreement that there’s nothing out of the ordinary on Paul’s test results, but he’s still grimacing a lot, complaining of being dizzy and weak, and he’s stopped combing his hair, which is a big red flag in Soapland.
Paul’s decline in health tugs at Terese’s heartstrings, and she eventually agrees to give him one final chance, much to the annoyance of half of Erinsborough. Only Harlow is pleased about it, but she’s wearing beige trousers and a bright green boob tube, so what does she know?
It all becomes clear later when Paul’s specialist arrives, and he is the crimeiest looking crimer that anyone has ever seen. He couldn’t look less like a doctor if he tried, and it turns out that Paul is paying him to come up with some sort of juicy illness that’s going to make Terese keep feeling sorry for him. Because what do you do when someone has agreed that they’ll give you one absolutely drop-dead final chance to not act like a total bin bag? You immediately fake an illness to emotionally manipulate them. What could possibly go wrong?
Freya is Up to No Good
I haven’t trusted Freya from the minute she skulked into the complex and started snooping around the wreckage of the Flamingo Bar. Sadly, actual police officer Levi doesn’t seem to have the same sort of radar for untrustworthy people, because he’s rapidly falling for Freya, despite her being dodgier than a nine bob note. Freya is nosing into Levi’s background and the attack on him as a child, and then she manages to wangle her way into a police car with him so that she can use his Bat Computer to look into the guy she’s searching for. The only trouble is that she gets rumbled by Roxy, who is still suspicious even after Freya spins her some tale about her essentially Googling herself on the police computer. Even Roxy isn’t that daft though, because surely you would already know if you had a criminal record or not? I thought it would be Sheila who would figure out what Freya’s up to, but it looks like it’ll be Detective Roxy instead.
Zara is Training Nell
Amy is still struggling with her two tandem problems: that of having had a hole in one of her lungs and also having bought a food truck when she can’t actually cook. She’s stressed out about her finances, and so Toadie decides to ask her and her awful child to move in with him, without even mentioning it to Melanie first, and let’s not forget that this is the same teenager who accidentally got his daughter drunk. It looks like he is immediately regretting his decision as soon as Zara moves in and starts leading cute little Nell astray. Zara has only been there a matter of hours and Nell is already giving Toadie bucketloads of sass. This is all going to come to a head very soon, and there is going to be another big blow-up between Toadie and Amy about Amy’s parenting, or lack of it. She clearly went to the Pierce Grayson school of child-rearing.
Hendrix Has Some Admirers
Talking of Pierce’s offspring, Hendrix makes the most of the sunshine by going down to the lake to shadowbox and do somersaults on the grass, as you do, and becomes the unwitting object of three adoring girls’ affections, as Zara and her horrible friends sit down to ogle him. Of course, she can’t resist showing off that she knows him, and she gets him to come over and hang out with them for a bit. Hendrix seems to be completely oblivious to the fact that they’re all practically drooling at his feet, and is shocked when Mackenzie later tells him that Zara has a crush on him. Meanwhile, Zara has told her Mean Girl Squad that there’s trouble in paradise between Hendrix and Mackenzie, so clearly, she’s going to begin attempts at breaking the two of them up. She’s very tedious.
Leo’s Had Enough
Leo is grieving, and while I understand that grief is a horrible process that is different for everyone, he is behaving like a prize wally at the moment. There are people all over Erinsborough trying to help him out, from David, Aaron, and Nicolette, to his colleague Glen and also Toadie, who knows what it’s like to be left as a single dad after the death of their mother. Leo, however, is not interested in help from anyone and is generally being very unpleasant. He’s invited on a boys’ fishing trip but ends up having a bit of a hissy fit and going home, then when he gets there he doesn’t want to put Abigail to bed and has a go at David. I’ve had my fair share of grief to deal with, and it’s truly horrific, but it was fairly easy to avoid being a total jerk to everyone who was nice to me. Leo needs to sort himself out.
The approach to parenting has always been a little bit loose in the Tanaka/Brennan household, with babies being swapped, bought, and sold all over the place, and now it’s Leo’s turn to take a novel direction with how he copes with his new status as a single dad. Abigail fell off the settee and was absolutely fine, but ever since then, Leo has been convinced that he isn’t really father material, and so he makes a big announcement at a family picnic about Abigail’s future. As if she is a house plant that he is no longer invested in, Leo asks Aaron and David if they’ll take over as her fathers. I’m so glad that my mum never decided to donate me to someone else because I cried when she tried to change my nappy…
