Happy New Year everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year and you’re ready for another 12 months of Unmissable Drama™. We were left with the cliffhanger of a car speeding towards Sadie, Max and Sebastian, and things picked up right where we left off, so let’s dive in with this week’s recap.
Cliffhanger Resolution Leaves Us All Underwhelmed
Not for the first time in Neighbours history, we were left with a cliffhanger that amounted to almost nothing in the end. After the car comes speeding towards Sebastian, Sadie and Max, everyone lies strewn across the road. Thanks to Max pushing Sadie out of the way, it’s only Seb who seems to be badly injured, and rather than check whether he’s still breathing or not, Byron just flaps about and then calls the emergency services. OK, that does need to be done, but it’s also pretty important to check if your casualty is STILL BREATHING, Byron. He seems like a lovely lad, but he’s definitely not the sharpest.
Max is really rattled by the accident and wonders if the person in the car was trying to hit him – there’s something dodgy in his past that we don’t know about yet that means he could potentially be in danger. Even after he’s been told that Seb was the target, he goes rifling through the car, even though it’s technically a crime scene. Andrew is hanging around Max like a bad smell, and I can’t decide if he’s suspicious or if he’s just being attentive because Max helped save Sadie from harm. I think Andrew is probably going to uncover Max’s secret before too long though.
The incident seems to have caused a thawing in relations between Sadie, Max and Byron though, with them asking Max to stay on at the share house. I might start a petition to kick Max out and keep Vera.
Krista Continues To Handle Sebastian In The Worst Way Imaginable
Naturally, Krista’s reaction to finding out that someone tried to kill Seb is to swoop in and try to protect him. She discovers that he transferred the money back that she’d given him to pay off the loan sharks, which explains why they tried to hurt him. At first she moves him into a hotel room, and he says he wants to get sober. But when he takes too many of his painkillers and winds up on the floor, she decides she needs to keep him closer, and moves him into her flat. She also goes along with it when he says he doesn’t want to go to rehab, but wants to stay with her instead. All she seems to be doing is ensuring that he becomes incredibly dependent on her.
Leo isn’t best pleased with Seb hanging around because he thinks there’s a danger of him leading Krista astray. Paul advises him to try to “manage” Krista’s friendship with him, which is a horrible, horrible idea. No woman wants her partner to try to manage her friendships, and it’s a surefire way for Leo to lose Krista and continue down the path of turning into Paul II.
Aaron Goes on an Awkward Date
OK, so I finally know for sure that Aaron’s toothy new love interest is called Rhett, after being unable for weeks to discern if people were saying “Brett” or “Rhett”.
Rhett turns up in The Waterhole at a Christmas gathering when Aaron is on shift, and despite revealing to Aaron that he’s been regifted some lemon and bacon candles which he previously bought for his friend, and which he freely describes as awful, Aaron finds himself being attracted to him again. It’s not often someone tells you almost directly that they have a personality disorder before you start dating them, but he must have one, because I can’t figure out why else you’d buy lemon and bacon candles for someone.
Anyway, Aaron ignores this glaring red flag and decides to go on a date with him. They plan to go to see a movie, but Aaron is charged with picking up some lights from the city for the Lights Up festival, so they combine this with their date. Aaron gets them lost, talks about his dead husband FAR too many times and then accidentally headbutts Rhett, so you can say their date didn’t exactly go to plan. Strangely Rhett is still up for another date. I told you he must have a personality disorder of some sort.
Aaron is not the only one looking for love, as when he gets home he finds out that Jane has made the most boring dating profile in the history of human existence, so he has to help her spice it up a bit and add a photo that doesn’t look like she’s in the middle of giving a Year 9 assembly. I have the feeling Jane’s dating app adventures aren’t going to go well.
Paul and Terese Are All Over Each Other
Paul and Terese can’t seem to keep their hands off each other – if they’re not sucking each other’s faces in front of everyone at their places of work, they’re running around half-dressed in the flat Paul shares with Leo and Abigail. Everything seems to be going really well between them, probably a bit too well, if you ask Leo. That is, things are going well until Paul starts getting ideas about them working together again on the Power Road development. Terese is obviously not keen, presumably because their working relationship was often so toxic in the past, but Paul isn’t picking up on her signals.
If Paul continues to push it, the honeymoon period will be over very quickly, which I’m sure Leo will be really pleased about.
Sadie Gets a Piercing
Sadie takes a piercing course with a view to offering body piercing at the salon. She goes for the septum, which is pretty bold for your first facial piercing, but it really suits her. She’s worried her dad is going to go mad, but he’s really cute about it and thinks it looks nice. Byron, on the other hand, clearly doesn’t like it.
Well, do you know what, Byron? If you don’t like it, then tough. It’s her septum and she can have it pierced if she wants, and she doesn’t need your permission or your feedback. Grow up.
Yaz Ups the Ante With Holly
Holly is busy trying to help organise the Lights Up festival, but she’s having problems navigating Yaz’s volatile moods. It doesn’t help that she’s massively unsettled by the perfume that was sent to her house, looking like it was a present from Keith. She eventually donates the perfume to the Foundation charity shop, but then the perky lighting expert Yaz has hired turns up wearing it, and Holly has the most unhinged reaction. I really couldn’t grasp whether her reaction was supposed to look like a genuine panic attack, or whether it was played for laughs (which would be a bit weird, to be honest), but it was truly the most bizarre thing I’ve seen on Neighbours for a while.
After Holly accidentally knocks the boxes of lights into the pond because she’s in such a flap about everything, Yaz starts to waver about whether she’s being too hard on her. It’s Nicolette who unknowingly inspires her to give it her all to get revenge on Holly, when she tells her there’s no limit to what she’d do for family.
Yaz then seems to suddenly make some sort of dastardly plan to do with the light festival, which has left me a bit confused. I kind of assumed all along that the entire thing was some sort of plot, and the festival was always a vehicle for getting revenge on the whole of Erinsborough, but it seems like she only really had the intention of coming to mess with Holly for a while, and the bigger plan hadn’t occurred to her until now, which is kind of strange. Surely there was a less intensive way to get to Holly than organising a festival that lights up an entire suburb?
A Few Random Notes
As usual, here are a few random notes I took while watching Neighbours this week:
- Lemon and bacon candles, Rhett? No wonder she gave them back to you, are you a psychopath?
- Did Leo just call Paul a “mysterious romantic onion”?
- How many long, brown, tight, knitted dresses does Krista own?
- Why is Aaron dressed as an aubergine?
- I still think “lost loves” is a really depressing theme for the light festival.
- Sadie coming in like the lass from The Ring didn’t draw attention to her piercing at all…
