*UK PACE*
I’ve failed again and not seen Thursday’s episode of Neighbours, but that means I get a double dose on Monday, so it’s not all bad. Let’s round up last week’s UK episodes. Well, four of them anyway…
No Baby For Roxy and Kyle
Roxy is so convinced she’s pregnant that she wants to host some sort of weird pregnancy reveal party where she takes a pregnancy test in front of everyone. Presumably she won’t do the actual peeing on the stick in front of everyone, or you would hope not anyway.
She comes back down to earth and does a pregnancy test privately in the end, and it’s a good job she does because it turns out to be negative. They decide to get the ball rolling on IVF, but it’s at this point that David delivers the heartbreaking news that they’ve lost all of Kyle’s sperm in an accident at the lab.
Hats off to Neighbours for showing fertility problems, it’s something that’s very common but rarely talked about, and it can be devastating. I actually know someone who lost embryos that were being stored in a lab and she’s understandably completely unable to get over the loss of what might have been. Fertility issues can be utterly heartbreaking and Zima Anderson and Chris Milligan played the scene really well.
Harlow Goes to London
Harlow has been summoned to London by her auntie, who happens to be Amanda Holden. Like every London trip in the history of Neighbours, there are shots of every single landmark (because are you really in London if you don’t walk past Tower Bridge?) before Harlow gets down to the business of figuring out why her auntie wanted to see her. It turns out she’s in financial difficulties and she’s been offered a big old hunk of cash by The Order to hand over Pru’s old diary.
Aside from the auntie situation, there’s a really weird cameo by Sophie Ellis-Bextor which I didn’t even try to understand, and also Harlow meets some posh kid in Harry Potter glasses called Corey, who she starts flirting with. I have my suspicions about Corey, I think he’s an undercover agent for The Order – he’s too nice to be a normal British boy for one thing, and for another, he seems to be taking more than a passing interest in the scribblings of a madwoman who got blown up by a wedding present. He suggests to Harlow that she burns the diary, which she does. Or does she? I think Posh Corey switched them, so we’ll see if I’m right. This can’t be the end of the London storyline, there must be something else to it, because if this diary-based plot turns out to be a total cul-de-sac then it definitely wasn’t worth the plane fare.
Montana Goes All Indecent Proposal on Leo
After Mick gloriously tries to sabotage Terese and Chloe’s pitch for Montana’s fashion week, they realise the only way they’re going to get anywhere with her is to get Leo to try to charm her, which he does a bit too well. She tells him that Lassiters can host the fashion week as long as he sleeps with her. He mulls it over, then tells Terese, Chloe and Glen that he didn’t go through with it, but that’s a lie. Leo and Montana are hooking up all week, but even that doesn’t put her in a good enough mood not to be entirely unpleasant in every business meeting. I do think she’s right about not going with the same colour scheme as Lassiters though, especially if they’re talking about the colour of those incredibly heinous uniform blouses. Anyway, I’m bored of Montana’s monochrome outfits-big sunglasses-ice queen act now. Bring Mick back, or else what’s even the point of her?
Paul is Scheming
“Why does everyone always expect the worst in me?” Paul asks this week, in all seriousness, as he is very obviously in the middle of one of his ridiculous evil schemes. It seems like what he’s doing is being overly nice and conspicuously uninvolved in Terese’s business, presumably in the hope that his lack of attention will drive her nuts, which it already seems to be doing. Surely it won’t be long before someone figures out what he’s up to though, they all know him well enough by now. Paul might be evil, but he certainly isn’t a genius, and his schemes are usually as transparent as my gym leggings once I’ve forced my walnut-crusher thighs into them.
Kiri Comes to the Vineyard
Because there are only about five people in the Greater Erinsborough area, Leo hires a new events manager and it just so happens to be his operations manager’s secret daughter. Because of course it is. Glen reacts to the hiring with absolute blind panic, and spends the whole time wandering around the vineyard with a look of abject horror on his face, which I am not sure is the correct way to keep his big secret under wraps.
Chloe is pretty taken with Kiri and immediately offers her the spare room at number 24, because it went so well when she offered Freya a room having only known her for five minutes. I’m sure Glen is going to be absolutely delighted when he finds out about that, and equally displeased about it is Nicolette, especially when she sees her ex-girlfriend and ex-fling cosying up in the Waterhole together. That is awkward. Nicolette and Glen might not be on the best terms after she pushed him in the Lassiters pool, but they’re going to be equally horrified by Kiri moving into the street, so maybe they have more in common than they thought. They can both wear matching horrified expressions….
