2019 Season - UK Episode Discussion

[H&Alover]

Oh, I'm not sympathising with him at all, just trying to get things in perspective, and the fact he  is a psychopath/sociopath when we look at Ebony and Ross behaviour who claimed he 'loved'  Bella when  all he wanted to do was to keep control of her, don't forget he lied to her for five years that her mum had left them.   Colby, as I think someone suggested,  didn't drag Dean into any of it, Dean was just as much out for Ross' blood as Colby, but when they caught up with him was content with knocking seven bells of hell out of him, he had no idea it would end as it did, not sure even Colby did.  Btw what is it about the bay that attracts psychos, remember Penn?

At least Simone is aware she is being 'kept sweet' Ziggy is just being fobbed off by a guilty hubby who then turned on her making her feel she is at fault.  Justin can't do any more, he's told them both what he thinks, they're adults, he nearly caved in and told Leah but wisely kept it to himself.   I think it's more the lying to Ziggy that is doing his head in.  Ziggy certainly  gave Simone a swerve  about keeping away from her husband, but she doesn't know it's gone beyond Simone having a thing for Brody and him being tempted.

I was going to 'say' here's an idea Simone switch your phone off, but she can't otherwise she'd miss any calls from Maggie.  Double edged sword too for Ziggy, Simone could help Raffy who is her step sister-in-law and Simone has trained for years to be a teacher and I would imagine being a special needs teacher involves a whole lot more training to deal with the various problems kids like Bella and Raffy have.  Raffy's problem is retaining anything whereas Bella who is clever, she can read and write but effectively her education stopped when she was 11 when her mum died so essentially is at primary school level.

Lots of overreacting between Martha and Alf, for once Marilyn didn't interfere too much just gave Alf  a few words of wisdom. I think a man  of Alf's age isn't prone to showing his feelings, it's how things were when he was young, his dad was probably the same, a 'real' man didn't go in for that soppy stuff it was left to the sheila's.  Great he got over his reluctance to admit he still cared for her and stopped her and their talk was quite moving, good suggestion they just take it one step at a time and see how it works out. A thought did strike me so I could be way off, but maybe TPTB decided to bring her back for when Alf learns that Morag has died, Martha would be a good support for him. 

Wow what are they feeding Jett on at that training camp, he's certainly shot up!  It was nearly two years ago since Jett has been in the bay.  If his profile page, where he is listed as Jett Palmer,  is to be believed he's now 20, crumbs where did those years go? Good to see his character hasn't had a head transplant.

[atrus]

Three weeks on, and lots of bad behaviour in the Bay, of which I'll begin with the worst. Chelsea leaving Colby - well, I can't say it's undeserved. Any sympathy I had for the character has more or less evaporated; he seems completely unrepentant and unaffected by what happened, and what's more, doesn't seem to care about how it's affecting Dean, Willow, Bella or anybody else. To be honest, he was lucky Chelsea didn't march straight in and shop him to McCarthy. Speaking of... did anyone else get a feeling McCarthy is slightly suspicious of Colby's story? I don't know; I couldn't put my finger on it, but I wonder if part of him knows or has a fair idea of what happened, but that he's playing it as if they're still working together to figure it out. Anyhow, the news of Colby being a murderer continued to spread through the ex-Mangrove River residents like wildfire, with even Karen now let in on the secret - which strikes me as a particularly unwise move, even though her scenes with Dean were lovely. Let's hope Marilyn and John don't find out what Colby did, or they'll have their sights set on Bella as their latest teen acquisition.

Brody is just awful, too, with both Ziggy and Simone coming across better than him as he continues to both have his cake and eat it.

Tori - yes, awful as well. I was prepared to countenance the possibility that she might not have done a terrible thing by using the embryo - but in lying to Robbo about it, and then making Jasmine complicit in her secret, she took it way too far. I don't understand at all why Jasmine went along with it, though, other than (from a writing perspective) for maximum drama when Robbo found out.

My knowledge about H&A's past isn't as encyclopaedic as some, but even I thought it was odd Martha talking about the Blaxland, as I was pretty sure it was a relatively recent development. Still, apart from that, I did enjoy the lighter scenes between her and Alf -- but I do continue to wish we'd get some discussion of what's been happening with Martha in the interim, and how she pulled off her audacious death-fakery in the first place and lived an entire life under the authorities' radar.

Good to see both Mason and Ryder supporting Raffy, although all this talk of medicinal cannabis leads me to suspect that a Drugs Are Bad storyline is likely to be on the horizon. I don't pay much attention to H&A spoilers these days so I don't actually know whether Coco is coming back after the stated 10 weeks, but the timbre of her exit felt pretty final, and led me to suspect it will be one of those things where we hear she's decided to stay, has got a prestigious internship, etc etc.

[ter06]

I was furious tonight when Martha was talking to Alf about Vietnam. He cheated on her there, this is how we have Ryder who Martha is quite close too! Has she never questioned where he came from?? Well Martha his mother is the result of an affair your beloved Alf had in Vietnam when he was married to you!!! There is way too much glossed over for my liking! Poor Ails must be spinning in her grave! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the absence of Morag is a really apparent in this story as she would have ran Martha back to where she came from and she would have put Alf rightly in his place 

[Red Ranger 1]

2 hours ago, ter06 said:

the absence of Morag is a really apparent in this story as she would have ran Martha back to where she came from and she would have put Alf rightly in his place 

Well, that's one area where we really can't blame the show because, you know, staffing issues.(As for the rest of it, the details of where exactly Martha was during all this were glossed over when Quinn appeared in the 90s anyway, so hard to be sure of anything.However, it was stated that Alf met Quinn's mother in Summer Bay, he's not Jim Robinson! Martha did ask if Ryder was her grandson when she first turned up, but I'm not sure if she ever got a satisfactory answer.)

Anyway!

Justin seems to have quickly gone back on his resolve to let Brody make his own mistakes, as he's back advising him to sort things out with Ziggy.There was a feeling of Brody going through the motions for a form of validation here, just to prove that he and Ziggy want different things out of life.(She wants them to stay together, he doesn't.)So it must have been a bit of a jolt when Ziggy instead started making plans for the future!

I continue to be uncomfortable with the show and characters trying to turn Jett into Raffy's brother as if she hasn't already got plenty of those, it feels like we're back to her being treated as a Palmer rather than a Morgan.(Significantly, her family weren't mentioned at all when Jett talked of people having her back.)It's a shame, because we had two great scenes between John and Jett here which shows how these foster child relationships can work if they're allowed to evolve naturally rather than being forced.I suspect I'm going to have very mixed feelings about Jett being deployed, but at the end of the day, it's his life choice and it's not exactly unexpected.

[English Invader]

9 hours ago, Red Ranger 1 said:

Justin seems to have quickly gone back on his resolve to let Brody make his own mistakes, as he's back advising him to sort things out with Ziggy.There was a feeling of Brody going through the motions for a form of validation here, just to prove that he and Ziggy want different things out of life.(She wants them to stay together, he doesn't.)So it must have been a bit of a jolt when Ziggy instead started making plans for the future!

I was thinking that the H&A producers could try a different approach to infidelity with this one;  i.e. have someone who is prepared to accept cheating as part and parcel of the relationship; it does happen in real life when people decide they would rather share a partner with someone else than give them up altogether; even to the point of inviting the third party to move in with them.  Brody could even swing it by saying: "If Simone comes to live with us, we could split the mortgage three ways!"

Yes, one could question the wisdom of committing to buy a home with an openly adulterous partner and the woman he's having an affair with but there have been plenty of other stupid things done in H&A so why not?  And it would be a new dynamic for the show to explore.

Personally, I don't think Ziggy should forgive Brody and I hope Ben smashes his face in when he finds out.  Brody's affair is very different from Zac's in that Zac did it once and regretted it instantly while Brody has kept on doing it while lying and making Ziggy believe their maritial problems are her fault.  Leah should have forgiven Zac but Ziggy should not forgive Brody.

 

[H&Alover]

Martha must have been around when Alf had his fling/affair with Mary as he mentioned last night about his return from Vietnam, Australia were involved in the conflict from 1962-1972, Alf must have been stationed somewhere away from the bay as according to Wikipedia Mary was stationed in Australia I can't see Alf doing a Brody by messing on his own doorstep.   I think it was explained to Martha who Ryder was, don't forget Quinn turned up after Martha 'died'.  As did Owen and Ric but that is another story as Alf's liaison with Viv Standish happened before he meet Martha and once again he had no idea he had a son, let alone a grandson.  Talking of Vietnam  a question of mine was answered via a neat little mention that Alf had told Martha about his PTSD.  Nice that Martha said she was sorry she hadn't known abut it as maybe she could have helped him but it took Alf years to admit  there was something wrong plus PTSD didn't even have a name then. I know some don't like the pairing repairing(?) of Alf and Martha but someone new wouldn't have the history they do so be able to reminisce over things, as long as they take it slow I do like the reunion between them.

Erm yes Ziggy and Brody, I'd like to believe he does still love Ziggy, they went through such a lot to be together and OK Ziggy can be a handful, Ben did warn Brody about that and they are very different people with differing outlooks on life but on the whole they do fit and a  couple don't have to agree on everything.  I think Brody wanting to plan for his/their future is down to all those years he and the rest of the Morgan's spent on the run from The Syndicate, back then they couldn't plan for anything as they had no idea if TS would catch up with them again so all would have to be abandoned. Ziggy on the other hand had a settled and stable background, Ben & Maggie looked after everything so she (and Coco) didn't have to worry about anything, Ziggy definitely takes after Ben whereas Coco takes after Maggie.  At least he's trying to get in step with Ziggy to make it work, but I think her enthusiasm took him by surprise.  It could be the age gap, there's six years between them, and Ziggy is at a different stage of life, but you can have a mature 20 year old and an immature 30 year old so doesn't necessarily follow.  It did suddenly ping in my brain that Ziggy and Jett are the same age!  After Ziggy scratches Simone's out I shudder to think what she would do to Brody, he'd better hide his knives.

Btw Simone did tell Brody not to contact her didn't she so why was she texting him?

The curious dynamic TPTB have around Jett and Raffy aside the reunion between them all was lovely.  John sussed there was more to Jett's visit than first appeared but wisely kept his counsel until Jett was ready to tell him.  As we saw from the trailer Marilyn is devastated he's being deployed to Afghanistan but her telling John he's got to stop him is futile, Jett's an adult and of course he's scared but is prepared to go.  He is very young to be a lieutenant and platoon commander. Something different intrigued  me  - Jett's idea of a family photo - wasn't that a Fletcher tradition?

Never mind Ailsa being airbrushed out of Alf's life unless my ears blinked I don't remember Jett or John mentioning Gina at any time considering she had a lot to do with turning his life around. In fact it was her who first took him under her wing.

Zac's one off can't be called an affair.

[Dan F]

7 hours ago, H&Alover said:

Alf must have been stationed somewhere away from the bay as according to Wikipedia Mary was stationed in Australia I can't see Alf doing a Brody by messing on his own doorstep.

They did meet in Summer Bay, at a point in the war where Alf was seemingly yet to be sent to Vietnam - the full history of what happened between Alf & Mary is in Quinn's profile. As RR1 said (which I also remember discussing at the time), the timeline was already off in Quinn's initial stint in 1995. Whilst not explicitly confirmed, it was very heavily implied that Martha was not on the scene when he got with Mary, as they were hoping to start a serious relationship themselves. This is despite both previous and later continuity backing up the fact that Alf & Martha married in 1969.

The relevant extracts:

It transpired that Alf had met Quinn’s mother, Mary, during the Vietnam War. Mary was working on an airbase further up the coast, and had come to Summer Bay on an R&R break. She had met Alf at a local dance at the pub, where he was working behind the bar. After talking for a while they found that they were both big Elvis fans, and Alf told Quinn that Mary was a great dancer. One thing led to another and a relationship developed, but Mary eventually left town without Alf knowing that she was pregnant....

....Alf explained that when Mary’s commanding officer had learnt that she had started a serious relationship with a local, she was shipped off on the first plane back to the US. Alf wrote to her every week for two months, but didn’t hear back until he one day received a letter to say Mary had met someone else and they were getting married.

https://www.backtothebay.net/characters/quinn-jackson/

The backstory of Quinn/Ryder was certainly not explained to Martha on-screen. On learning that Ryder was Roo's nephew she simply asked Alf "You had another child?" - at which point Roo interjected by saying she thought Alf wouldn't really want to talk about what happened after Martha left (which was wrong anyway), and it never got mentioned again.

[Red Ranger 1]

14 hours ago, English Invader said:

Personally, I don't think Ziggy should forgive Brody and I hope Ben smashes his face in when he finds out.  Brody's affair is very different from Zac's in that Zac did it once and regretted it instantly while Brody has kept on doing it while lying and making Ziggy believe their maritial problems are her fault.  Leah should have forgiven Zac but Ziggy should not forgive Brody.

Part of me does wonder if Zac came across a lot more sympathetically than the showmakers had intended (I think pretty much everyone was on his side), so they're doing their best to make Brody as unsympathetic as possible.I don't know: As unlikely as it seems, if Brody did come to his senses, end things with Simone and beg Ziggy for forgiveness, I'd like to think he's not completely beyond redemption.

I forgot to mention that we got confirmation Jett was 20 (it feels like he should be older, I think he might be due a birthday soon).I also forgot to mention that, even though it wasn't dwelt on, Jett was by Gina's bench when John found him the next morning.Marilyn annoyed me, although not as much as I was expecting.Her "There's a war there!" was calling out for someone to remind her that's the point, and did she really think Jett wouldn't go where he was ordered to just because she said so? But at least she calmed down enough to wave him off, and I liked that Jett called her "Mum" for I think only the second time after inexplicably demoting her back to Maz on his last stint, although I'm with John that reading horror stories about Afghanistan isn't helping.I'm glad that Raffy wasn't shoehorned into the farewell scene, although I'm left thinking that she probably never did get her game of pool.

Dean kissing Willow thankfully seemed to get glossed over but him volunteering to open up for Ben seems like a recipe for disaster.At least he had the sense to set his alarm, problem is it seems he's not going to be near it! I am half-expecting him to go digging for Ross' body and find it's not there and Ross is alive, which would seem to be the only way to get him and especially Colby off the hook, although that seems very unlikely in the circmstances.Jasmine really needs to buck her ideas up and get back to work, she'll be out of a job at this rate.I can understand her worries about Robbo though, it wouldn't be out of character for him to just ditch everything and start again somewhere else, although he seems to have quite a few loose ends to tie up.

[Dan F]

14 minutes ago, Red Ranger 1 said:

I forgot to mention that we got confirmation Jett was 20 (it feels like he should be older, I think he might be due a birthday soon)

Three weeks time

https://www.backtothebay.net/characters/jett-palmer/

[D.B]

8 hours ago, Red Ranger 1 said:

Part of me does wonder if Zac came across a lot more sympathetically than the showmakers had intended (I think pretty much everyone was on his side), so they're doing their best to make Brody as unsympathetic as possible.I don't know: As unlikely as it seems, if Brody did come to his senses, end things with Simone and beg Ziggy for forgiveness, I'd like to think he's not completely beyond redemption.

Personally, I think he did come a lot more sympathetic than Brody, as while he did cover up the truth, he did show extreme remorse about it, and in that case, one could make a justifiable argument that Leah pushed Zac away first, dividing up the blame between the two of them, but now, Brody and Ziggy had no problems beforehand, and the affair only occurred because Brody was just bored of married life, I guess? And you're right, that Brody could redeem himself by ending the affair and coming clear, but given his attitude, it would still be a long road for him. 

As it is right now, all of my sympathy lies with Ziggy right now. Again she is left to believe that what ever's happening between her and Brody is her fault, while Brody struggles to keep both his partners happy. It's really hard to take either him or Simone easily: both knew what they were getting into, and neither could complain about sneaking around if they want to continue the affair. I wish that Justin could just wash his hands of the pair of them and tell the truth. 

Meanwhile, in better news, great to see Jett again! I loved his scenes with John memorising, though I found it weird of the apparent brother-sister relationship shown with him and Raffy: being friends is just find, but the show's just trying to make them look like they've known each other their whole lives, even though I don't think Jett met Raffy the last time he was here, and also as Red pointed out, Raffy already has brothers! But now it looks like Jett is being deployed. I understand John and Maz's distress and worry at that, but Marilyn's statement 'he can't go', yeah, there's not much she can do about that, I fear. I liked how we got a scene with Alf and Jett about the army, I felt that would be very important and I did enjoy his last scenes with his parents. So let's just hope and pray that this isn't the last time we hear of Jett. The scenes with Alf and Martha were good as well, I'm happy that they addressed their time during when Alf was conscripted given the relevance right now. 

Meanwhile, Dean continues to spiral downwards, but I'm surprised at the end, digging up Ross's grave. Is he going to confess? Meanwhile, Jasmine is worried about Robbo, which is understandable and I love that she still is, though she ought to watch the number  of times she calls in sick for the hospital. I get that she doesn't want to be civil with Tori, I wouldn't want to either, but still. Still loving her friendship with Willow.