cymbaline

In the mid-90s Michael rescued a little orphaned Yugoslavian girl in the bush and tried to foster her. Then they found some relatives and sent her to live with them. Did they ever say where the relatives were living? It sounds crazy to send a kid to live in the middle of a war zone. Imagine if it was a Ukranian kid now - would anybody be sending them back home?

Personally, I don't think Bobby slept with Alan but the script brought things perilously close. With the benefit of hindsight, watching the two of them together makes for slightly uncomfortable viewing. I wonder did anybody working on the show at the time know what would come next? Having said that, it wouldn't be the first time we've learned characters had sex without giving us any clues.

It has echoes of Luke Skywalker fancying Princess Leia, doesn't it?

They forgot he existed? Or he had got trapped in that mysterious spare bedroom in Pippa's house that was never seen again? It would've been great to see John Clayton back but by then he was on Police Rescue.

In some of the early episodes, there were comments made which suggested that Bobby wasn't a virgin. I can't remember the details now but I noticed that inconsistency. In general, it is funny how weird that were about sex in those days. I've said before that it was very odd that Pippa and Michael never did the deed before they tied the knot (cue the conversation in their bedroom after they returned from their honeymoon). There are also no end of older teenagers who you'd imagine would've moved on to having sex but never seemed to.

I think Bobby was just one in a long list of people who were required to put their brains into hibernation for a while. It was also jarring to see the Rosses asking Irene to look after things when Pippa was having her baby. This'd be the same Irene who was last seen breaking into their house and then tried to get her own kids into trouble with the law? Yep, that's exactly the person you'd trust to look after your family, your house and your business... Bobby came of age at a time when they didn't write well for young adults. We can all think of young characters who simply fizzled out after school, or the underwhelming young adults who came in. That's why going away for a few years and then coming back would've give her a shot in the arm.

On the race theme, remember the time the Rosses briefly took in Kevin, played by Wes Patten. He must've been one of the first indigenous actors on H&A. It smacked of tokenism and was pretty badly written.

Adam was the one who ran up the big phone bill at the time. Maybe there were some reverse charge calls from his mates up the coast ? but mostly he was trying to drum up business for his latest business scam venture. Matt's parents were travelling overseas at the time and Adam tried to pin the bill on him. It's hard to remember that not too long ago, there was no way to easily contact people who were travelling overseas. They'd write letters or send telegrams.

Theirs is a relationship that you could easily see turning abusive, isn't it? I got those vibes from it and it's interesting to see other people thinking along the same lines. It would've been a brave thing in the '90s, having the "love at first sight" relationship between the two main characters taking a sinister turn.

Matt fell out with Adam and Marilyn over a high phone bill that came in. These days you'd have to go out of your way to run up a high phone bill.

So that hasn't aged well! ? I also remember Michael telling Haydn he needed a good kick up the bum. Not that he was wrong about that.

I wish they hadn't killed her off and I think a lot of people agree. In an alternate universe, she would've been a really good character to bring back à la Steven later on. I'd have had Bobby and Greg split up after his affair was uncovered and sent him on his way. He'd still become a mediocre absentee dad. Bobby and Sam would have still left town, leaving the door open for both to return. If Nicolle had had a change of heart and wanted to reprise her role as Bobby, she'd have fitted right back in. I'd have her raising Sam as a single mother, with things getting interesting when he became a bratty teen. She could've gone back to flipping burgers in the diner but I'd have preferred to see her do something else. She could've retrained as a lot of things during her time away. A teacher? A nurse? Mechanic? Depending on when she came back, she might've been around when the two main mother figures in her life moved on. Pippa moving away would've been a big loss to her but not as significant as Ailsa's death.

I can't think of any other specific examples just now but you're not wrong about that. I was surprised to hear Pippa telling Sally she wasn't too old to get a "good whack around the backside" in the episode after she comes back from her overnight camping trip with Michael. I didn't think parents hitting their kids was still a thing. Maybe it is? Also in that era, we had Alan Stone (alcoholic deputy principal at the school) bringing back caning.

Jack winding up Michael by pretending he liked wearing women's clothes.

He's pretty terrible, isn't he? He's not a pleasant fellow when things don't go his way and that's being kind to him. That's before you get to the times when he wasn't honest with Carly and when he made big decisions without consulting her. Surprisingly he and Carly are still married in the Home and Away afterlife, even though the writers like to break up couples offscreen.

It depends what you call a bad send-off. In comparison to some of the main characters who left fairly abruptly, there was some planning put into her departure. Over the course of several weeks, we saw her and Ben's new life on the farm turn sour. Then they broke up and she discovered she was pregnant. She thought she'd be a single mother, but then Ben came back for her. If you look at the two episodes that covered Pippa and Michael's wedding, there is a lot of time given over to Carly and Ben. She got to celebrate her reconciliation with Ben with her friends and family who had come to the wedding. What were you looking for? Montages? Tearful goodbyes and people waving her off?

I don't remember thinking it was weird at the time but then again, I was only a teenager. When I watch those old shows now with adult eyes, the haste at which people get engaged and marry is startling. It felt longer at the time because you'd have to wait for the next episode to air. A weekend could really throw things off. I wonder did they accelerate things between Carly and Ben because they knew they were about to lose Tom? Until Pippa and Michael happened, Ben was the main man in the house.

Frank had moved into the flat behind Ailsa's shop as well, so he wasn't living with Bobby. The next two "under the same roof" relationships I can think of are Sophie and Haydn and later, Sally and Jack. Pippa and Michael told the department about Sophie and Haydn's relationship before they got married and they okayed it as long as there was no funny business. I don't remember if anything was done about Sally and Jack later on.

If Bobby had an irregular cycle, alarm bells might not have rung immediately either. Even though the episodes running up to Bobby's miscarriage aired in November, I think time had accelerated in Summer Bay. There was a big fuss made about Christmas in that year and the characters were all doing and saying things you'd expect to see in December. Well, apart from Pippa committing the culinary crime of making her Christmas puddings so close to the big day ?

Bobby's connection with Sam seemed to be far closer and more intense than any other foster parent/child relationship. He became the son she never had and the two of them had a profound effect on each other. She wasn't in Sam's life for a huge amount of time but he still spoke of her years later. He was the son she never had and she became the mum he'd always wanted. Maybe he filled the void in Bobby that had been left after losing her child and she never wanted to foster again. I wonder did the powers that be change track after they saw how Nicolle and Ryan worked together? There seems to have been a genuine affection between the two. Maybe they decided to bring in Greg and turn them into a nuclear family? Although Bobby didn't seem to ever look for another foster child, she had taken Tug under her wing before she died.

I've read that when they shoot historical films and TV shows in stately homes, the owners usually don't allow them to remove the paintings from the walls. To the people who know about these things, it jumps out at them as quickly as the Australian plugs.

You might have seen the other thread in this very forum talking about the lack of teens these days ? In answer to this question, my guess is that they prefer working with young adults. Teenagers by their nature bring more challenges to a set because they're still immature and not as worldly-wise as they think they are. It's possible they didn't want to be bothered breaking in more 15 and 16-year-olds with little acting experience. If Wikipedia is to be believed, the crew nicknamed Matt Doran and Dieter Brummer the "Overtime Boys" because the two lads were messing up their lines so much. If stories like this are true, you can understand why they'd rather hire older actors. Also, if they have older actors playing teenagers, it's easier to age them and give them adult storylines if they stay around for long enough.

Maybe they're languishing in Summer Bay limbo along with Debra Stewart, Kate Ross and other forgotten characters?

Bobby as a foster parent is another one. I think we forget how young Bobby still was when she got Sam because of how much she had packed into the previous 3 years on H&A, and because she seemed to be older than she was. Would they really give a 21/22 year old single woman a foster child? Especially when it was known that she had been a teenage tearaway, then had a short-lived marriage, then had lost her own child? That's a lot of baggage in a short space of time.

That's an interesting question and maybe one that's guided by our ages and when we started watching ? It's hard to see them getting rid of Vanessa, but equally I don't know what they'd do with Pippa now. Maybe it's a chicken and egg thing. There are no teens to live with Pippa because there's no Pippa around. She belongs to a gentler time and Irene is better suited to the edgier Home and Away. But as we know, Irene mightn't have been around for any of this if Pippa hadn't left.