cymbaline

That's true, though an ex-husband resurfacing would shake things up a bit. They dredged up Martha and Heather from the mythical pasts of Alf and Marilyn so why not an ex-husband? Though the Morgan thing is probably an equally big dealbreaker now. Haha, now that's disturbing! (but true)

I'm glad I'm not the only one who never warmed to Frank. He was easy on the eye but I never bought him as a boy next door or Prince Charming. That observation about his 1992 return is spot on. He showed us how shallow a person he was and also, that he didn't know what he wanted. He was definitely a man who needed to spend some time being single after being with Bobby and Roo. Ironically, I wished Bobby had taken him up on his offer rather than go through with her wedding to Greg. She and Frank would've fizzled out again once the novelty wore off but he was still better than Greg. She wouldn't have looked at him twice if it wasn't for Sam. Even though Bobby became a foster mother while she was still young, I think she and Sam were a good pairing. I would have rather seen her raise him as a single mother rather than get into a relationship with yet another unsuitable man. Both her husbands were awful in a low-key way. I wonder have they ever asked Alex Papps to come back as a guest? Even though it's a different Roo now, it'd be fun to have them rake over some old coals.

Even as a young teenager, I didn't take to Bobby and Frank as a couple. There seemed to be something tepid about them and it didn't surprise me when they split up. Watching again years later, I still see no chemistry. It has the feel of the producers deciding to have a go at creating a Summer Bay Scott & Charlene. Frank and Roo was too messy by then so they went for the next best thing. It's very much a rebound relationship and if they hadn't rushed Bobby and Frank up the aisle, it'd definitely have fizzled out. If Alex Papps had stayed for longer, they'd still have split him and Bobby up. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any female characters he might've dated but I'm sure they'd have brought some in. He and Roo had a spark but they were a bit dysfunctional. I thought that Bobby and Grant had better chemistry later on and pairing them up would've worked. They managed to marry her off to two men whom she had zero chemistry with, and both made her less interesting.

Maybe they thought the viewers wouldn't notice amidst all the turmoil of the time. I've just taken a quick look at some episode synopses and there was an awful lot going on in 1996. An old codger's miraculous recovery from dementia was always going to come second to deaths, departures and the general amped-up nature of life in Summer Bay at that time.

Looks like somebody on the show was suffering from memory loss and it wasn't Bert...

When they brought Pippa's dad Bert back in 1995, he was becoming forgetful and having accidents because of it. He eventually moved into a retirement village which was an arrangement that seemed to suit everybody. When he was brought back in 1996 and 1997, was he still like this? Or had they forgotten what he was like in 1995?

I don't know anything about NSW parental leave either but if it has followed the trends of other territories, conditions have improved since 1992. Debra has also said that she was able to bring Grace into work with her and kept her in a room off the set. A soundproof room I assume ? Obviously I don't know what H&A's other new mums do, but this sounds like a special arrangement. A way to get Pippa back on the set before too long.

It definitely did. Episode 820

Maybe they decided to run with the fostering thing and give viewers a chance to get used to the Stewarts and Fisher taking people in?

They could've put plenty of boxes on the counter for her to fuss around with. Or used her basket ? Did Marilyn ever climb that ladder other than when pervy schoolboys wanted to look up her skirt? They wouldn't have much luck with Pippa's skirts. True, you could see how tough she was finding things towards the end. I wonder did she even have much of a maternity break? It's hard to measure time on H&A but it still looks like Debra didn't have a long maternity break. Certainly not like what women tend to take today.

You'd wonder did the lack of returns cross her mind from time to time? She has been open about not getting acting work and how she started doing the books in her husband's business as a result. Long-term it may have worked out best for her because quite a few of the young actors from those early years are no longer in the business.

Killing her off was a bit much. It would've made equal sense for Bobby to re-evaluate her life and decide to start again elsewhere. She was smart as a button and could easily have gone on to university. Bobby taking stock of her life, selling her share in the diner and moving away to do something different with her life would've made sense. Or she and Greg could've moved away with Sam to start again elsewhere. Of course, we'd have been denied that notorious fridge scene.

It would've been harder to hide Debra's bump because Pippa was always on her feet scurrying around the place. Unless they sent Pippa to work in Alf's shop! I've taken a look at a 1992 summary and you could argue that hiding Pippa's pregnancy would've been tricky without them doing some serious re-writes. There are a lot of Sophie storylines in the months after she has Tamara and Pippa has a lot of involvement with them. I also remember Debra's bump being pretty big towards the end and that she looked tired.

In hindsight that false sense of security doesn't hold up well at all. We now know that Greg didn't stick around for long after Bobby died and it's easy to think of other ways she could have been written out. You could cut Greg a bit of slack re. walking out on Jackie and Sam if it wasn't for him repeating that behaviour. Even when he came back in 2000 to ask Sam to move in with him, it was a bit wishy washy. He had met someone else but was still working as a long-distance truck driver. He'd still be away a lot, leaving Sam to try and get used to living with yet another family of sorts.

It was on-brand for Greg who didn't have much strength of character. He had already let Sam and Sam's mother down back in the day. After Bobby died he didn't wait very long before he cleared off again, leaving Sam with a man who wasn't even related to him. Then when he finally resurfaced, asking Sam to move in with him, he still didn't have an awful lot to offer him. After Bobby found out about his affair she chucked him out on his ear. What was very odd was people urging her to take Greg back. Other than the risk of losing Sam again (had she adopted him?), what did she have to gain by taking him back? It all felt very 1950s.

I think Tom was too good to be true at times. He's probably more popular than Michael but I think Mr Ross was a more believable character. I agree with you about that separation story. Whether by accident or design you could trace the roots of their problems to plenty of incidents, and you could see their marriage souring over time. I like that Michael also carried the baggage from his previous marriage to Alf's missus and that it got thrown back at him when things went wrong. It was cute to see them get back together, especially when they got teased the morning after Michael slept "not in Jack's room". Having said all that, I still wonder would the writers have concocted an affair if they hadn't killed Michael off.

Why were these characters written out after a year or so? If the actors themselves were opting to leave, that's one thing. But if they're being axed, it implies that the powers that be don't rate them.

? @Pippa's new heart. Who knows? I'd have to listen back to the chat with Debra again but I think she simply said they could've said a bit more about Pippa's underlying condition and Dale being a bit of a miracle. It was a brief comment in the middle of everything else. They definitely wrote Pippa's pregnancy in because Debra was expecting in real life. I'm pretty sure she has said in the past that she offered to leave but they said no. I have no memory of her ever explaining why they killed Dale off but it was a decision made while she was still pregnant. My guess is that they didn't want Pippa raising two young kids, as you've already surmised. Christopher used to come and go and even at that, Pippa seemed to spend half her time fobbing him off onto Sally. I don't think they wrote the cot death story for the shock value at all. It was a pragmatic way for the scriptwriters to get rid of Dale, horrible and all as it sounds. Didn't the episode where Dale dies win an award? I thought they did a good job of writing that episode and the ones after that where Pippa and Michael struggle with their terrible loss.

I stumbled across a British podcast called Soap from the Box over Christmas and one of the episodes has a chat with Debra Lawrance. Somewhere during it, Debra mentions Pippa's pregnancy. She was aware of Pippa's health problems and felt something more should've been said. But this is soapland and it sounds like the biggest issue for everybody is getting all the episodes filmed by the end of the week.

It feels like something that was thrown in to liven things up in the Fletcher house before they sent Tom on that one-way car journey. What would've made for interesting watching was Pippa or Tom or Michael actually having an affair. All they ever did was rattle the marriages from time to time but an affair or the chance of one would've made things interesting.

I think all soaps chase the ratings and try to move with what they think the audience wants. Neighbours had already tapped into the appeal of good-looking young soap characters to a younger audience. My feeling is that they stumbled across this by accident and ran with it. They had some good teenage characters in those early years and I think that's one reason why people continue to have nostalgia for them. I stopped watching regularly after 1996 so I can't comment on the Liam/Steph/Casey/Tiegan etc. combo. My feeling is they don't carry the same nostalgia as their predecessors.

They did and it worked out fine. I was just riffing on an alternative universe, based on the idea of Celia being Bobby's mother. Just spitballing Andrew Foley was another one who was around for quite a while, though of course there was a gap before they brought him back in '89. Some of those guest characters were around so long, they were borderline opening credits material.

Is Celia succumbing to the sins of the flesh really more implausible than the Martha ridiculousness? I could see her having a one-night-only special with Les just before he went to Vietnam, and being torn between the two sides of her personality. The prudish god-bothering side we all saw, and a more hidden red-blooded-woman side. When she found out that Les had died and she was pregnant, she hid the pregnancy. Perhaps she saw it as a shameful lapse and something nobody was to ever know about. To that end, she gave her baby up for adoption and doubled down on her prudish, religious persona.

Didn't they have a comic Scottish character with a dreadful accent in 1989? The bunyip hunter who fancied Celia.

It was also very early in the show's run so they were still figuring the formula out. They didn't get Donald right for a while either IMHO but at least he was given time to develop and move past the awful cardboard cutout he was at the beginning. Back in the day, there was talk of trying to bring Simon Kay back somehow. If that's true, it suggests that the powers-that-be regretted killing him off. It's a sliding doors moment, isn't it? Would they still have given Bobby the parents she had if Alan had stayed?