Neighbours – Ramsay Street Round-Up

My brain is still fried this week, so I am very glad I took notes because I had completely forgotten Monday’s episode by the time I came to write this on Friday. So, this will be less of a round-up and more of a refresher for me this week.

Paul’s Greatest Hits

The weird voiceover at the start and end of Monday’s episode was very strange. It reminded me of a cross between Arrested Development and Pushing Daisies. I low-key loved it, though. The only thing that could have made it better would have been a reappearance of the Jim Robinson bauble from a few Christmases ago.

Despite Chelsea being absolutely hideous, Aaron is worried about her because of all the time she’s been spending with Paul, who is Aaron’s number-one enemy at the moment. He tries to warn Chelsea by giving her a greatest hits tour of all of Paul’s most villainous moments, which is absolutely thrilling to me. One of my favourite things is thinking about the insane amount of absolutely bonkers things that have happened to a Neighbours character over the years, so hearing it all listed for Paul in the show was a big thrill for me.

Chelsea doesn’t listen at all, though, and seems intent on continuing to try to manipulate Paul for her own gain. I’m so ready for her downfall. When is it going to happen? I thought she was going down as soon as she stole Josh’s plaque (plaaark), but because nobody has enough brain cells to check the damn CCTV footage to see what happened to it, she hasn’t felt the full power of Terese’s temper yet. She will, though.

Wendy is Simply Thrilled to Have an Ex-Con in Her House

Felix is out of the Big House, and Wendy is thrilled to have a robber in her house. She literally cannot contain her excitement. She will be less excited when she realises that Felix is indeed JJ’s biological father, confirmed this week by the presence on both of them of a massive and very unconvincing birthmark on their lower backs. They’ve done a pretty good job of casting Felix, though; he could plausibly be JJ’s dad; there’s more than a passing resemblance between them.

As predicted, Remi is already put out at the idea of an ex-con on the street, so imagine how thrilled she’s going to be when she realises he contributed 50% of her son’s genetic material. It’s going to get pretty tasty between the Rodwells and the Varga-Murphys.

Sadie and Byron Have a False Start

Sadie is going to ask Byron to have sex with her, then decides against it, but it happens organically at the party anyway. After it happens, she immediately starts acting weird. Byron clearly likes her, but she’s doing her best to act cool and pretend she just wants to be friends, even though she doesn’t. Byron pretty much spells out to her that he wants to be more than friends, but she still pretends she’s not interested.

To make matters worse, Holly blabs about the plan that Sadie had to ask Byron to help her lose her virginity, and he catches her looking at his escort profile online, which leads to him feeling used. I really enjoyed the role reversal in this storyline – usually, it’s the female character who is left feeling used; it was refreshing to have it go down the opposite way. Sadie manages to iron things out with him but is still steadfastly pretending she isn’t interested in him, which is incredibly frustrating.

I never picked them as a couple, but now it’s a possibility. I want it to happen. They’re so cute together, and I need Byron to have a girlfriend who isn’t as soul-crushingly dull as Reece was.

Paul Goes to the Tip Where He Belongs

Terese just can’t let go of Josh’s plaque, and so neither can Paul. Chelsea is doing her irritating best to arrange an obnoxious-sounding date day for the two of them, but Paul is totally preoccupied with the idea of figuring out where the rubbish from the complex was taken.

He finds out which tip it was taken to, and finally, we get to see him in his natural habitat, surrounded by his fellow pieces of steaming trash. I wish he’d have taken Chelsea with him because she absolutely belongs at the tip as well, as does her awful jacket that looks like a cross between motorbike leathers and the settee my parents had in the 1970s. Amusingly, Paul goes to dig through the rubbish in his shiny shoes and executive trousers. Does he not own any other clothes? Why didn’t he go and throw on some scruffs before going to rummage around a tip? He could even have worn his dressing gown. I bet it stinks by now.

Quite implausibly, Paul spots some old Lassiters lamps on the rubbish pile and texts Terese to tell her. Terese instantly sacks off her plans to have a romantic afternoon with Toadie in favour of scrabbling around the dump with her garbage ex-husband, and they miraculously find the plaque, leading to yet another “moment” between her and Paul. This has backfired spectacularly on Chelsea; she thought chucking the plaque would do nothing more than hurt Terese and stop her from hanging around the hotel, but what she’s done is allow Paul to be Terese’s knight in shining armour.

Throw Toadie and Mel in the Tip as Well

I simply don’t understand why Chelsea thinks that sabotaging Toadie and Terese’s marriage will benefit her, but this is precisely what she does after getting dumped for the dump by Paul. She goes and tells Toadie that Terese is with Paul, which she knows is going to cause tension between Toadie and Terese. But why does she want that? Surely it would be in her best interests for things to be going well between Toadie and Terese because then Terese would be out of Paul’s orbit?

Whatever her motivation, the revelation has the desired effect, sending Toadie, snorting with rage, straight over to see Melanie. I’m annoyed with Toadie over this; he’s being an absolute spatula at the moment. I understand that seeing Terese constantly worrying and checking up on Paul must be triggering for him because it causes a certain type of insecurity, but for his first reaction after Terese cancels their date to be to run to his ex-wife and practically knock the greenhouse down while trying to kiss her is decidedly crappy. At this point, Toadie and Terese’s marriage is an absolute car crash, and Toadie is not helping.

To the tip with all of them.