I’ve had a slightly better week, and Neighbours has been great fun – we even got Drunk Paul! What a treat. Let’s get on with rounding up this week’s action.
Eirini Grifting
In the wake of Terese’s departure from Eirini Rising, management are suddenly hit with a bunch of complaints from the residents, who seem to be trying to pin every last medical complaint and mishap on the complex. Susan goes into crisis management mode, and soon realises that it’s Moira (the lady with the revolting hat) who is the ringleader.
They invite Moira to talk to them about it, and she refuses to budge, then she steals the whole-ass plate of biscuits off the table as she leaves. I don’t know what it is with the grumpy old women in this show but they’re all absolute legends.
Rather than either Susan or Karl doing anything about it, they decide to get Harold to handle it for them. I know he’s the residents’ representative, or whatever the position is called, but I do hope he gets some sort of discount on his pokey little room for all the labour he does for them.
Harold figures out that Moira is just lonely, and so he takes one for the team and takes her out for coffee, and talks her out of riling all the residents up. Harold and Moira go back to tell Karl and Susan, and they walk in on the two of them getting a little bit saucy again, this time with Karl’s stethoscope. I think Karl and Susan should just have their own blue box room at Eirini, WITH A LOCK ON THE DOOR.
Nicolette Makes a Mess
I knew this was all going to go tits up, and I wasn’t wrong.
In an attempt to get her parents back together, like it’s some sort of Disney Channel movie, Nicolette lies to Melanie about how uninvested Vic was in her when they were talking online, telling her he was seeing other women at the same time. It has the desired effect at first, because Melanie tells Vic to sling his hook, so Vic goes back to Jane.
Now, if Nicolette had actually thought this one through she might have realised that Vic committing himself to Jane only after being rejected by Melanie could leave Jane feeling a little bit like the back-up choice. And that’s exactly what happens, and it’s a thought that only plants itself in her mind more firmly when Nicolette admits that she warned Melanie off.
Jane couldn’t spot a red flag if it was being waved directly in her face, and at first she’s prepared to forge ahead with Vic, putting on her saucy lingerie and trying to get him to be at least a tiny bit excited about having sex with her at some point, something for which he is showing zero enthusiasm. She finally gets him into the bedroom, but it seems he can’t perform, which leaves Jane feeling even more convinced that he wants to be with Melanie instead.
Eventually, she does the sensible thing and breaks it off with Vic. Vic is furious with Nicolette, because he’s gone from having two women interested in to having none at all, so he and Nicolette have a falling out.
I do love Nicolette’s sass, but she’s so childish sometimes. She should have realised that all she was doing here was setting Jane up to get hurt. Nobody wants to be in a relationship that’s been forced into existence, it’s not exactly romantic.
Shane is Back!
Shane Ramsay is back, and he’s brought his smarmy son with him, but more on him in a second.
Shane’s main issue is that he and Izzy have broken up, and he doesn’t seem to be able to get over her. He asks Karl how he ever got over Izzy, while Susan is standing right there, and I am personally amazed that he’s still alive enough to tell the tale. Susan is hilarious as she asks Karl if they’d like to dial Malcolm in as well, so they can all swap notes.
They don’t call Malcolm, but they do enlist another Izzy ex in the shape of Paul, and the three of them proceed to get absolutely battered together. I didn’t know I needed to see these three characters being a drunken mess, but it turns out I did, and I absolutely needed to see Susan go into teacher mode in order to get rid of them out of her living room as well. What a delight.
Max Causes Waves
Max makes a big entrance by knocking Holly into the Lassiter’s pond without apologising, and Holly and Byron immediately take against him, so it doesn’t go down well when Vera invites Max to move into the share house. Exactly how many bedrooms does that place have? There’s now Vera, Byron and Sadie, Nicolette, Krista and Max living there – are you telling me that’s a five-bedroomed house? Because it doesn’t look like it is. And they only have that tiny little sofa next to the dining table to sit on as well.
Anyway, Max makes himself even less popular with Byron when he flirts with Sadie, and Sadie has to give him a warning about being too territorial. The upshot is that to prove to Sadie that he’s not a caveman, he has to agree to live peacefully with Max, which I predict isn’t going to go well at first, but then they’re going to become best friends.
Shane pulls some strings with Paul, and Max gets a job at Lassiter’s, even though he doesn’t want to be working there, or living in Erinsborough. He’s got some shady past that we don’t know about yet, and apparently it’s not safe for him to stay wherever he was before. What did he do? Crimes? It has to be crimes, surely.
Karl is instantly won over by Max because he fixes his car for him for free, and Karl embarrassingly tries to fix Max up with Holly, which she shuts down immediately. I wonder if the lady doth protest too much…?
It’s All going Too Well For the Varga-Murphys
Remi and Cara decide to ask Aaron if he’ll be the donor for their baby, but he has to turn them down because of him carrying the gene for Huntington’s. They’re disappointed, but they still want to try to find a known donor for their baby. They’re excited about their upcoming trip to New York and feeling quite loved-up, which can only mean one thing on Neighbours – disaster is about to strike.
It strikes in the form of a workplace accident for Cara. She’s up a ladder at Lassiter’s when Holly pushes a luggage trolley, which rolls towards Cara’s ladder and knocks it, sending her falling to the ground. Holly is absolutely useless, just standing there with her hand over her mouth, rather than rushing to Cara’s side to check she’s breathing or anything else essential like that. Someone get that girl some first aid training.
Cara is rushed to hospital, where she is predictably Remi’s patient, who sees that not only is her wife unconscious, but she has a serious abdominal injury as well.
First of all, someone get Remi away from Cara, because she cannot be giving her wife emergency medical treatment – that is a huge conflict of interests. Secondly, I think we all know what this means – Cara’s abdominal injuries are going to prevent her from having a baby, aren’t they? It’s Libby all over again.
As Cara’s life hangs in the balance, it also means that poor Holly is given another big dose of trauma for being the cause of the accident, which is the last thing she needed right now, although at least this time she didn’t commit murder by crocodile.
A Few Random Notes
As usual, here are a few random notes I took while watching Neighbours this week:
- The Eirini residents are such grifters. How are you going to blame tennis elbow on a gas leak?
- Vera is hysterical: “I’ll get the trots if I eat those slimy nuggets.”
- The new kid calling Holly a Karen! Brave.
- I love how Byron is such a softie until someone hurts someone he cares about and then he REARS UP.
- Ew, Max is such a smarmy creep.
- Karl: “You’ve got to block and roll, babes.” I am deceased.
