I swear that as we head towards the sad ending of Neighbours (again!) the weeks are going faster and faster. How can another week have passed since I last over-analysed the bonkers goings-on in Erinsborough? It somehow has though, so let’s get on with rounding things up.
Annaliese is Back
Paul is back from New York, and he’s brought a heritage character with him. I’ll be perfectly honest, nothing in this storyline makes the slightest bit of sense to me, least of all that horrible beige polyester pantsuit that Krista keeps wearing, which makes it look like she’s gone into work in her PJs.
What we’re eventually lead to believe is that Paul wants to start spending more time in New York, and so he needs to find a manager for the hotel who he can leave in charge while he’s not there. He already has Krista though, and has not made any noise whatsoever about her not doing a good job, in fact they seemed to be getting on better than ever just before he left. So quite why he needs to look for an alternative is a bit beyond me.
Despite this, he’s brought Annaliese with him, and he’s pitting Krista and her against each other to see who’d make the best manager. I know who I’d pick as the manager – the person who’s already holding that position and doing a good job. Baffling.
He’s pretending to Krista and Annaliese that he’s brought Annaliese in from the Manchester branch of Lassiters to help them win the Bronze Bell prize. Incidentally, “Bronze Bell” is a really stupid name for a prize because, in terms of prizes and medals, bronze implies there’s a silver and gold above it, which there obviously isn’t in this case. I know it’s to alliterate with “bell”, but the fact is that a bronze anything just doesn’t sound that good.
I’m guessing that the reason Annaliese is really back is so the producers can continue to bring in as many heritage characters as possible for a bit of a swan song before the show ends again. I’m never mad at a character coming back, I just wish that sometimes the writers came up with a more plausible storyline to explain it.
Saskia stalks Susan
Saskia continues to act bizarrely around Susan, being very clingy and over familiar. She wants to spend all her time with Susan, both at work and outside it, and it’s making Susan feel decidedly uncomfortable. Having raised the behaviour with Wendy and Jane to see if they can shed any light on why she’s acting so strangely, Susan also feels that she has to let Saskia go from her job at Eirini.
Saskia is furious, and immediately sneaks into the Kennedys’ garden, where she starts smashing up Susan’s plants. Dex catches her in the act, and initially agrees to keep it a secret, but Karl quickly wears him down and he goes to tell Max what’s been going on.
Meanwhile, Jane has received Saskia’s files from her old school, and Saskia sneaks into the school and sets the bell off in order to distract Jane, while she goes in and doctors her records to make them cast her in a more favourable light – not knowing that her secret is already out.
She finds out that Dex hasn’t stuck to his word (for once this kid made a good decision) when her mum turns up out of the blue, and her and Max stage a little bit of an intervention, the theory being that Saskia has some sort of attachment disorder stemming from her parent’s divorce. They then line up everyone who Saskia has wronged so she can apologise to them. Nicolette takes it with the lack of grace you’d expect from her, but it’s Holly who stuns everyone, especially Max, by laying into Saskia for the things she’s done. I’m not being funny, because Saskia is clearly a disturbed kid, but I don’t think it will do her any harm to hear about the consequences of her actions and how she’s made people feel – I’m just not sure it was Holly’s place to say it.
Holly’s outburst has the added effect of making Max mad, and as he pushes Holly away, he is unwittingly pushing her towards her creepy dad crush. More on that later.
Cara and Remi Are Struggling
Cara and Remi are both still struggling with Remi’s selective amnesia. Remi feels incredibly awkward knowing that she’s shared her life and home intimately with someone who feels like a stranger to her, and Cara is devastated that her wife can’t remember her, and is consequently acting coldly towards her. She’s also frustrated because it feels like she’s bending over backwards to make Remi feel more comfortable, while she’s not getting much back from Remi.
The Kennedys have stepped in as the local amnesia support group, and as such, Remi decides to go and stay with them for a while in order to give them all some space.
I keep flip-flopping between where this storyline is going. Is there going to be some drama for a bit, and then there will be one key incident which causes Remi’s memory to return (like another bop on the head) and everything will go back to normal? Or are we looking at a 50 First Dates sort of situation, where Remi still doesn’t remember Cara but falls in love with her again anyway? Because there have been little moments where Remi seems to be warming to Cara, and I think there might be some hope of them falling in love all over again, but then she returns to being cold and pretty indifferent to her wife.
This one is quite an interesting story anyway, and I love that the Varga-Murphys have two authorities on amnesia in the form of the Kennedys so close by, it’s so funny. My neighbour fixed my gate this week, but I’m not sure I’d be going round to ask for his advice on a rare psychological condition.
The Whole Holly and Andrew Thing Continues to be Weird
I’ve expressed my feelings on this plot line before, but I’m going to come right out and say it again – I hate it. I don’t buy Andrew and Holly as a couple, and I also think it’s mega creepy for a man to be sniffing around his daughter’s best friend. It’s just so, so icky. And as much as I’m not the biggest Wendy fan, neither she nor Max deserve to be cheated on.
But that’s where it looks like things might be going. After Holly caught Andrew watching out for her by the lake in the creepiest way he could possibly have managed it, she gives him a serve and tells him that he needs to make up his mind – either he cares about her or he doesn’t. The two of them decide to back off from each other, return to being friends and stop all the weirdness between them.
But the attraction is obviously still there, because Holly is now being weird every time she sees Wendy with Andrew. When Holly runs into Gavin Bowman by the lake, she calls Andrew in a panic. I feel like she massively misrepresents what actually happens during the encounter when she tells Andrew about it, and she seems far too pleased by his reaction when he goes all caveman and immediately goes to rough Bowman up and threaten him. He obviously does still care about her, and she’s into it.
I might be being harsh, and she may have given Andrew a truthful account of the incident from her perspective, because trauma can definitely alter your perception of a situation, but I feel like she deliberately over-egged the pudding somewhat in order to bring out the exact reaction from Andrew that she got. There are definite shades of her mum going on there.
Whatever is going to happen with this storyline, can we just get on with it? Because I need it to be over already.
A Few Random Notes
As usual, here are a few random notes I took while watching Neighbours this week:
- The sex dice was a bit of a nothing story.
- Jane, maybe don’t mention a student by name and talk about her behaviour in a public place with someone who doesn’t work at the school.
- Susan needs to lay down some boundaries with this kid, she’s going a bit Single White Female.
- Why do all the clothes Annaliese wears have enormous lapels?
- “Why am I looking at Wendy Rodwell?” Something I ask myself a few times a week.
- “You seem so well I almost forgot there was something wrong with you.” What an insanely tactless thing for Wendy to say to Remi.
