Is 2005-2006 considered classic era?.

[adam436]

19 hours ago, James Martin said:

Yes, for me the Sarah Lewis storyline was to Home & Away what the Plane Crash was to Emmerdale, especially when you consider how that then dovetailed into the Zoe/Eve arc.  It either made you tune in or quit; there was no in-between.

Yep. Sadly for me, it was quit. I kept soldiering on for a few months, but it was killing off Chloe and sending Jesse to prison that was the final straw for me. I was never a fan of Jesse or Chloe, but it just seemed so pointless to me. At the time, I thought they might be adding Olivia to the already-expanding foster family at Summer Bay house, but Olivia was quickly whisked away by James and never seen again until 2015.

[ter06]

On 27/11/2021 at 04:12, adam436 said:

Were Ric and Matilda actually a Golden Couple? I stopped watching in 2005, around the time of episode 4000, at which point Ric and Cassie were together and Matilda had a crush on him. I know the Ric/Matilda/Cassie/Lucas/Belle/Drew group swapped partners quite a bit too. I know they ended up together, but I didn't realise they were considered a "golden couple" as such. 

 

Definitely, the show shifted from 2004ish onwards. The Sarah/Felix stuff and Noah's death was a turning point, then the drama kept ramping up from there and never really stopped. 

 

After Sally left, I'd say Charlie and Martha really became the "poster girls", for lack of a better term. They became the TV Week cover girls, the household names etc. 

For me, I thought the turning point came with Angie Russell. She was such a dark character and like nothing we had seen before. That success I think spawned a changed in the shows direction, a change I absolutely loved!!

 

[adam436]

On 01/12/2021 at 08:22, ter06 said:

For me, I thought the turning point came with Angie Russell. She was such a dark character and like nothing we had seen before. That success I think spawned a changed in the shows direction, a change I absolutely loved!!

Good point. Donald Fisher left during Angie's reign too, which was another lost link to the show's early days. Having one less character, especially one so synonymous with the early years, might have accelerated the show's change in direction to a small degree. 

You could even argue that prior to Angie's arrival, there was the ferry disaster and the first chapter of the Kirsty and Kane romance, which would be seen as another turning point really. Then shortly after Angie's story, we had Kane return as a regular and Dani going to prison, then the following year we had the Felix/Sarah saga, the Tasha mystery and Seb's accident, before the brakes were finally let off in 2005 with the Summer Bay Stalker and everything that came after.