Is anyone else a little relieved? They’ve been dancing around this storyline for ages. However, there was an interesting twist was when Kylie went on a killing spree after the revelation that Dylan had killed three people, including Kylie’s sister.
Can we take a moment to admire Kerry-Lee’s acting? She’s had some amazing facial expressions in the past few episodes.
I love that she dumped the ashes in the toilet. I don’t blame her, especially after everyone kept pressuring her about having a funeral for Dylan. Why not let Dylan’s brother handle it? And then everyone kept going on about it. “He was your HUSBAND!” That would be enough to make me lose the plot for sure.
Speaking of “acting”, Claire kept making this face during the season finale:
In other news, Mo died, so we’ve lost yet another core character this year. What gives?
Does anyone remember Clare? She was around for about five seconds six months ago and appeared to have a crush on Jack. Then she was raped by the Beachwood Beast and promptly disappeared afterwards.
Anyway, she arrived in town and immediately offered to be a surrogate for Jack and Lincoln.
Jack was thrilled with the idea for some reason, and said yes without even thinking about it.
What is wrong with Jack? “Well, I’ve been sober for a month after a serious p-addiction, I have essentially zero income, I haven’t finished school yet, and Lincoln and I have been together for only a couple of weeks, so this should be great!”
Jack and Clare ambushed Lincoln with the idea, and he was a bit ambivalent about it. Who would blame him?
He eventually came around to it after being pressured into it.
I assume that what we are meant to gather from this is that these people have all completely lost the plot?
Jack at least sort of has an excuse- those drugs probably really munted his brain. But the rest of them don’t have any excuse.
I’m also a bit worried about Clare. She was raped only a few months ago and is also only like 19 years old. And does she even know about Jack’s drug addiction?
In yesterday’s episode we had the very contrived twist of Clare overhearing Lincoln on the phone saying that she was “damaged” and that the surrogacy was probably a bad idea. Yeah, great idea to have that conversation in the staff room where anyone could just walk in at any time.
Does this remind anyone of Morgan’s disastrous surrogacy storyline back in 2009? You know, when Morgan decided that she just had to carry a baby for her friends?
Well, it turned out that the parents-to-be were actually total lunatics who were constantly at each others’ throats. They kept harassing Morgan, often screaming at her, and threatening to file lawsuits against her. Yeah (!), I’m sure a baby would fare very well in that kind of environment (!).
What a horrendous storyline. I think it may have been worse for me than it was for the characters. By the end I wanted to throttle the lot of them.
So how long do you think it will be until this new surrogacy situation goes pear shaped?
I know it’s taken me ages to write about this, but I just had to talk about this.
This week, Curtis abruptly left the show to pursue detective work in Christchurch. Yes, that’s right. After two years of will-they-won’t-they between Curtis and Esther, our “payoff” was Curtis telling Esther to “go to hell” before disappearing forever. What??
I think what we were meant to gather from this was that she didn’t want to keep him from missing this career opportunity, and this was the only way to get him to do this detective course.
But now what? Esther languishes on the sidelines for a few months? Curtis is totally forgotten just like that? I’m guessing Jayden Daniels decided to quit the role, but they still could have figured out a much better way to handle it.
Granted, the most recent character exit storylines have been pretty abysmal: Finn abruptly leaving for Sudan after a month of buildup for a romance between him and Zoe, only for Zoe to sit on the sidelines for a couple of months before completely vanishing without a trace (where on earth is Zoe by the way?). Then we had Vinnie decide that he just has to move to Singapore for a “better life”. Who cares about what the woman he married wants, or that she’s still recovering from PTSD after a car smashed into her, right? Oh well, I guess we just “want different things.” Vinnie became unrecognisable towards the end, but this behaviour was even more out of character.
Then we had Frank abruptly decide that he actually does want to go back to being a serial criminal, and hire a hitman to kill Dylan before skipping town. No one really seemed to care much that he was gone, so that was interesting. Kylie was like “oh well, I guess there’s nothing I can do about it” before immediately jumping into bed with Dylan. I hope they have plans to bring in more new characters, because the cast is rapidly hollowing out right now. We gained Lincoln in August but we’ve lost Vinnie, Frank, Finn and now Curtis.
How long have we been waiting for this moment? Two years? These two have been dancing around each other ever since Curtis returned to Ferndale a year and a half ago (and even before he left the show the first time!). We had to sit through months of them looking at each other longingly, culminating with Finn offering to pay him $10,000 just to leave town. Then there was Curtis’ desperately boring relationship with Becky. Thank god that’s over. Anyway..
Also this week, Nicole decided to make up for not celebrating Halloween by wearing something approximating a polar bear costume.
I rarely have anything to say about people’s outfits on this show, but I had to mention this one. It’s November in Auckland, not the dead of winter in Invercargill/Antarctica.
Damo took Dawn to a beauty salon before her wedding, which caused her skin to have an allergic reaction, and made Damo’s face look like this:
“Never trust a business with an unnecessary z in the title.”
In the end, Dawn and Ali got married without a hitch, so that was lovely.
Kylie decided that she absolutely has to marry Dylan, a man who she’s been with for barely a month, who just attempted suicide two weeks ago, and who has three dead wives, one of whom is her sister. What could possibly go wrong?
I guess she and Frank got married after being together for only two weeks, so this shouldn’t be too surprising.
Last but not least, Damo took Donny and Pele to the zoo, and left Pele, a four year old kid with diabetes, at the zoo alone, assuming that Lincoln would come pick him up. So responsible!
This week “Meryl” blessed us with her presence, having been hired as the new admin assistant.
Remember Meryl from the animal shelter? The employee who spent the whole time filing her nails while Drew was frantically looking for Chops?
I can only imagine what her references looked like. “Very hardworking. She can type with two fingers. 10 words a minute!” Rajiv has really outdone himself since becoming CEO.
Ew, I actually have to touch this keyboard?
She had some great lines though. “Bye Felicia.” “I get that you’re not well. This is a hospital. I’m not stupid.” “Yes, this is Shortland Street. Insert Maori greeting here. Can you call back please? I’m new.”
In other news, Rangimarie decided to have sex with Ezra, but then was caught by her mother.
Then she decided that her ‘lying’ mother was so unbearable that she had to run away and get into a car with some random guy she met in a carpark.
She found out that he was on the run and was all “oh, so you murdered someone? I’ll cover for you!” There are a lot of idiots in the show these days.
I’m loving Te Rongopai’s sister, though.
“No wonder she went there, hot off the press!” “Just because you got married a virgin, touched for the first time. Where is Madonna when you need her?”
Apparently I’m not the only one who hated Pita. What an awful guy. Yeah, blackmailing your ex-wife into breaking up with her new lover was really going to get her to forgive you for cheating on her.
In the past month, we have lost not one but two Warners – first Frank and now Finn. What is going on?
In fact, we haven’t just lost Frank and Finn. Today Becky decided to switch back to working at Central after a very amicable breakup with Curtis, and I am pretty sure this is the last time we will see her. No big loss there, the character was pretty dull.
I have to say, I’m pretty gutted about Finn’s departure. Not as much as Zoe was, though.
Lately, there haven’t been any casting announcements, so it’s never clear whether the actors have decided to leave or whether they were written out.
Either way, this is a huge loss for the show. Finn became a rather despicable character when he started abusing Esther, but was redeemed in what I thought was a pretty convincing way, which I think the actor can take credit for. This storyline made him into a pretty compelling character who desperately wanted to move on from his past, but would probably never fully forgive himself for what he did.
Anyway, the actor is very talented and I wish him the best.
However, what’s the plan now? They spent quite a bit of time setting up Zoe and Finn as a pairing, but now he’s abruptly left.
And what about Chris? It’s hard to imagine what role he will play on the show without any of his kids around. There have always been some people in that house- the triplets, Harry Warner, Rachel up until late 2016, Phoenix until 2013, etc.
Anyway, I hope they have plans to bring in some new core characters, because we have lost many in the past few months (Finn, Vinnie, Frank). Kawe too, actually.
I hope this new babysitter isn’t part of those plans. I don’t think she is going to cut it.
Can we spare a moment to talk about how horrible the past two years have been for Esther?
Let’s summarise:
October 2016: Curtis breaks up with her after being sent to prison for a drug offence.
February 2017: Esther is diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy after experiencing arrhythmias
August 2017: Esther is kidnapped by Jason (Finn’s stalker), and she experiences arrhythmias as a result, causing her to pass out.
December 2017: Esther is again kidnapped (this time by a prisoner who escaped) and she almost dies as her heart stops from the stress.
June 2018: Esther is brutally beaten up by her husband, Finn Warner. Her marriage dissolves afterwards.
September 2018: Kawe, her boyfriend, starts selling drugs while bartending at the I.V. Esther finds out about this and breaks up with him.
Also September 2018: Esther finds out that her heart is failing after yet again being threatened with a knife by two drug people who she was trying to help.
She’s so desensitised that she doesn’t even care anymore about Kawe’s drug dealing, because “at least he doesn’t hit me, right?”
Kylie isn’t having it
“I just have to keep looking at the good stuff, ignore the alarm bells, put them on mute.”
Yeah (!), that sounds like a great plan, Esther (!)
Several weeks ago, Jack found out that Lincoln does p (meth).
Jack ended up accidentally trying it while at Sebastian’s re-birthday, thinking it was E, and he enjoyed it a little too much. It’s a bit strange that Lincoln, who does meth semi-regularly, doesn’t seem to be addicted, yet Jack appears to be heavily dependent on it after only doing it only a couple of times.
Jack was really a wreck in today’s episode.
To which I say – what the hell is wrong with him? He saw what a drug addiction did to Charlie, so what is he thinking? Plus why are the writers doing this? We’ve already been put through this type of story with Charlie, who was not only abusing prescription amphetamine but also selling it. Lincoln does appear to be discouraging him, but of course it isn’t working.
He opted to take even more p after barely functioning at work.
I hope they don’t ruin Jack’s character with this storyline. P addiction is pretty gruesome. And they delved into this in 2012 with Hunter.
On the bright side, Jack and Lincoln kissed after Sebastian’s party.
I guess they’re together now, though it’s not entirely clear. I like the idea of them being together, but this drug storyline kind of sucks.
Lincoln’s great, though.
On to other things… Dylan and Kylie.
It looks like Kylie would also like to take a crack at strangling Dylan.
I don’t have any idea what is going on with this storyline. It looked like the main story was going to be Frank vs. Dylan, but then Frank was quickly written out. I guess the main focus now is on Dylan manipulating situations by faking emotions, but Kylie’s feelings for Dylan seemed to come out of nowhere. It looks like he somehow managed to use her grief over Julia’s death to manipulate her. Ugh.
Also, we really need to talk about Julia. Namely, was it really worth sacrificing her for this odious Dylan character? She was Kylie’s only family connection on the show – her only close family member with her mum gone and her dad who-knows-where/nonexistent.
They had an interesting, volatile relationship which they could have explored. Anyway, ugh.
Also, did anyone bother to tell Toby that his mother died? I know he and Julia weren’t close, but come on. It’s not like he’s in Antarctica, he’s only across the pond in Christchurch.
Toby
There wasn’t even a mention of him after she died. Mate, I get that she forced you to live on some strange commune, then ditched you to move to Sweden, but still. In fact, the only mention of him during Julia’s return was when she told Kylie how easy giving birth was for her.
Other things that irritated me: how come Miranda came to give Julia a stern warning about Dylan, but never bothered to directly state why she hates him?
Also, why did she disappear so abruptly? It does look like she’s going to return later this week, which should be glorious.
Eve made a brief return. It was amazing, other than the end. But we’ll get to that later.
Eve revealed that Remus has Hirschsprung’s disease, and that that was the reason for her return. He needed a bowel resection, and she couldn’t get him the treatment. Eve also told Boyd that she was going to turn herself in.
Dylan was very understanding of her situation – “for a straight white cis male, he’s extremely open-minded.” He pressured Boyd into not turning her in to the police. It wasn’t hard. In the course of one day, Boyd warmed up to her, and wanted to hide her in his apartment.
It was complicated to get Remus the surgery, since bringing him to hospital would make the police aware of Eve’s return.
Dylan convinced them that they could pass Remus off as some other baby called Oliver who was Dylan’s patient, which was absolutely insane. Then they discussed it loudly with the door open, of course. And Drew walked in on them, to their shock.
Boyd managed to get him to keep quiet about this.
They decided to go through with this insane plan.
Oh, I’m just holding this baby that I’ve decided to operate on last minute. I’m very protective of him, and his parents happen to not be around. But he’s totally not my son.
Nicole immediately noticed that something fishy is going on, but decided not to prod Boyd about it. She had some great facial expressions, though.
Of course, Eve insisted on showing up. What is wrong with these people?
She sees Lincoln, and immediately tells him that he must have children – “Oh my goodness. Wow, you are beautiful. If you have not sired offspring yet, for the love of humanity, please do.” Oh my god, how we’ve missed you, Eve.
Yes, you’re really going to fool everyone with your “disguise”, Eve.
She wasted no time in threatening Dylan. Nothing gets past Eve.
“On the contrary, people only see what they expect to. You of all people should know that.”
“Remember that you’re speaking to a former sociopath.”
“You’re so deep in your own lies, you’re even lying to yourself.”
“But if you through action, inaction or inattention, cause my family any harm, I will kill you.”
Eve, you’re amazing. (Yes, that was her “disguise”.)
But then it gets infuriating. At the end of the episode, Boyd tells Eve to flee town with the kids, again, and she does. “I’m determined to become the woman that you once thought I was.” “They need their mum, not me.” What the hell?
So they had the opportunity to bring back the most compelling character of 2017 and provide closure for one of the biggest stories of that year, yet they decided to rush through it in one episode? (It was a double length episode, but still).
There was so much juicy material that they just rushed through. You’re telling me that within the course of one day, Boyd goes from hating Eve and preparing to turn her into the police to wanting to protect her and thinking that the boys need her? How is that possible?
Even if he did pull that 180, now he is perfectly content with his children being raised by a woman on the run? Will she send them to school? Where is she even planning to live? Will she be shuffling them around to a different part of the world every couple of months? And that’s not even mentioning that he won’t be able to ever see them again. And why would they need their mum any more than they would need their father? Give me a break.
They could have explored all of these plot points, and also allowed her to have more interactions with Dylan. The story could have lasted a week, at least. But none of this was explained, and instead she was quickly shuffled offscreen. And now the children are gone too. So what was the point? It doesn’t give Boyd any long term story, and everyone who knows about it has decided to keep it under wraps. So we’re back to where we were before this episode, with Eve on the run with the kids.
My expression after seeing the end of this episode.
