I’m back from Spain, where I discovered that getting ten hours of sleep every night and reading all day is what makes me feel the closest to human that I’ve ever achieved. I thought it would take me a long time to catch up with Neighbours, but I somehow managed to get completely up to date in two days, which I’m slightly ashamed about. But, it means I can do a bumper edition of my Ramsay Street Round-Up this week, although there’s no way I can cover everything that happened during the last three weeks or I’ll need another holiday.
Eirini Almost Didn’t Rise
The big launch event for Eirini Rising doesn’t exactly go as planned. First of all, Hilary doesn’t get her personalised bottle of wine, and if there’s one resident you don’t want to get offside, it’s Hilary. The reason she doesn’t get her wine is because Dex uncharacteristically decides to be rebellious and drink some of it, leading to him dropping on the floor and having some sort of seizure. As you can imagine, this puts a little bit of a dampener on the festivities, particularly when it becomes apparent that the wine he drank was poisoned.
Side note – once again JJ makes a poor decision by choosing not to tell his mums that Dex was drinking wine immediately before he had the seizure. He’s worried he’s going to get his brother in trouble. Newsflash: your brother is currently unconscious, I think your mums have bigger fish to fry than grounding him right now. Give me flipping strength with this kid.
Nell is Doing Toadie’s Head in (And Mine)
On the subject of JJ and poor decisions, he and Nell have decided that they’re into each other, and Toadie is not so keen on the idea. I do think Toadie’s approach is a little bit “Caveman Dad” and he should probably lighten up a bit, but I don’t really blame him for not being ecstatic about Nell having a thing for JJ. Toadie’s not keen because the kid has a criminal record, whereas I just think Nell should stay away from him because he’s an absolute halfwit.
Nell has been pushing Toadie’s buttons a lot recently – bunking off school, not finishing assignments, sneaking around, lying about where she is, etc. Toadie reacts very badly to this because he fears it might be a sign that Nell is going to have similar troubles to the ones Sonya had when she was a teen. He doesn’t explain to Nell why he’s coming down so hard on her and banning her from spending time with JJ, which makes Nell and JJ go a bit like Romeo and Juliet and be even more determined to spend time together.
A little bit of blame for Dex’s poisoning has to lie at the feet of JJ and Nell, because they were busy being daft at the winery when JJ was supposed to be working, and it was because they left the wine unattended that someone was able to sneak in and poison it. JJ always does my head in, because he has approximately three brain cells and steadfastly refuses to use them, but Nell is very much grinding my gears at the moment as well. She’s got such an attitude – notwithstanding the way she’s been defying Toadie recently, I couldn’t believe the cheek she gave lovely Curtis when he was asking her some entirely reasonable questions about the stink bomb that someone let off at Eirini Rising. I wish she’d gone to Colac with Toadie.
The Poo Mystery is Solved
Karl’s spy, Aaron, goes on a ride with the YAHMILs and whips his phone out as soon as one of the lycra-clad lads runs off into the bushes for a poo. Finally, we know the identity of the mystery pooer, although his name completely escapes me now.
The problem is that the pooer is the grandson of the hoity-toity lady who’s just bought a flat at Eirini Rising, so Karl really shouldn’t rock the boat by going public, but he can’t help himself, and it leads to some of the best poo jokes we’ve had throughout this whole storyline. My favourites were both from Aaron, with him saying, “Brings a whole new meaning to the word photo dump,” as he shows Karl the photographic evidence, and also “Doesn’t he mean stool?” when the pooer offers to get his gran a chair. Genius.
The hoity-toity gran tries to buy Karl’s silence with a posh bike, but Mackenzie ruins it for him by blabbing to a friend who the mystery pooer is. The truth gets out very quickly, and thus Karl has to give his bribe back. Susan’s outrage at Karl accepting the bribe was another highlight of this whole saga. I’ll genuinely miss this storyline.
Harold is Back!
It’s lovely to have Harold back, and I particularly enjoy the exchange he has with Toadie about grief, where he talks about how much he still misses Madge and they have a toast to her. It’s truly lovely.
There is something going on with Harold though, he’s being sneaky and evasive about something and I’m not quite sure what it is yet.
Dex Finally Gets a Storyline (And Then Another One!)
After breaking some sort of record for being in the soap without his own storyline for longer than any other character, Dex finally gets two all at once. First, he’s poisoned, needs hospitalisation, and this leads to Nell hanging around a lot to show him her rubbish drawings of a superhero she’s done based on him. Dex misreads this attention and also somehow completely misses the way JJ trails around after Nell like a lost puppy, and thinks that Nell might like him instead. When he confesses this to JJ, JJ makes another terrible decision. I know crushes are tricky at this age, but Nell is clearly into him and not Dex, so quite what JJ thinks he’s going to achieve by giving her the brush-off to pave the way for Dex, I do not know.
Thank God Amira Has Gone
There’s this whole plot with Haz’s awful sister, who comes to help him recover and manages to rub pretty much everyone up the wrong way while she’s there. She mostly spends her time trying to get in between Mackenzie and Haz, then gets really defensive when Mackenzie calls her on it. The brief fling she has with Nicolette makes me think that she’s sticking around, but after Vc interferes with whatever is going on between her and Nicolette, Amira behaves really cruelly to her as well and then does a bunk. I can’t really be bothered to write too much on this because it all amounted to nothing in the end. What a thoroughly unpleasant character.
Holly Ruins Leo’s Life
Holly is apparently into true crime podcasts, and she dobs Leo in on a podcast forum for keeping hold of the poisoned bottle of wine so he could check it himself before giving it to the police. The podcast goes public with this information, and the consequences for Leo’s business are pretty dire. With bookings being cancelled, all the poisoned wine being recalled, and the wider launch of the wine brand being postponed, Leo is facing bankruptcy and he blames Holly for it. She attempts to make things better by trying to bribe the podcast host, but that just makes Leo look even more dodgy. Holly feels so guilty that she’s determined to fix things, so she’s about to go all Miss Marple and try to solve the poisoning case herself.
I have limited sympathy for Leo in all of this. It was a bit dumb for him to put all of his money into the wine launch, and it was incredibly stupid of him to keep the wine bottle instead of just handing it over to the police. His dad is loaded, but Leo’s pride won’t let him go to Paul for any financial help. He instead decides to sell the share house, where his girlfriend lives, and when she offers to buy the house (again, the house she lives in), he refuses because that would feel like charity. It would be charity for his girlfriend to buy the house he wants to sell. The house where she lives. I just cannot make this make sense. It’s like he wants to go bankrupt.
The Byron, Vic, and Nic show
Vic’s health is on the decline and he’s all about trying to make amends for being a rubbish dad and husband, by spending time with the kids and cosying up to Jane in a way that’s making Sam worry about Jane and Mike’s impending marriage.
This storyline had the potential to be really depressing, but instead, it has been pretty hilarious, and this is mostly down to Nicolette. She’s funny when she’s bossing Vic around and she’s downright hilarious when she’s bickering with Byron. The bit where they go to play mini golf and she angrily knocks Byron’s ice lolly out of his hand when he wins is comedy gold. I don’t know whether this is just plain funny or if it makes me laugh so much because it reminds me of my relationship with my older brother, but I’m enjoying it immensely. I’d like more of Byron and Nic being hilarious, please.
A Few Random Notes
As promised to round this out, here are some random highlights taken from the notes I made while watching three weeks of Neighbours:
- Krista, are leather pants and a top with a cleavage window appropriate attire for a hotel manager?
- Nell’s sneery smile makes me want to push her over.
- AKA “The Arsehole”
- Is the podcast host called Liv Bellend?
