Take an Early Years Plot Point and make it 2021

[homeandawayroxsomuch.]

I've been watching the part of 1990 where Emma Jackson was struggling with learning History and Paul Jensen was helping her to study, and I thought what if this was taking place in 2021 and Paul had got into Hamilton (he is into music after all) and completed the trivia questions on the Hamilton app on his phone every day and then introduced the app to Emma because some of the trivia questions were useful.

What other Early Years plot points could be given 2021 updates like this?

[torian]

foster familes we never have that anymore

[homeandawayroxsomuch.]

Not so much a Home and Away storyline, but imagine if music was as accessible in 1989-1990 as it is now, and Hosing The Furniture, a song that Jonathan Larson wrote for a revue in 1989 (long before he was famous for Rent), had reached Australian shores, and Vanessa Downing and Sharyn Hodgson performed it together with Pippa and Carly vibes in mind - Bonus points: The character's husband in the song is also called Tom.

[Homeandawayfan.]

If that was 2021, Emma would be a huge drug addict and would then hold the school hostage once it was found out she had been receiving help.

Yes foster families, an element in 2021 H&A that has been totally wiped out.

 

[homeandawayroxsomuch.]

1 hour ago, Homeandawayfan. said:

If that was 2021, Emma would be a huge drug addict and would then hold the school hostage once it was found out she had been receiving help.

I don't think she would have been.  Also, you could be a huge drug addict in 1989/1990.  I was thinking more about things we have now in technology and culture (such as smartphone apps and instant music streaming) that we didn't have then.

[homeandawayroxsomuch.]

Carly could have used Duolingo to learn Italian when she was trying to impress Mr and Mrs Lucini.

[adam436]

A few I can think of: 

Donald Fisher would have actually done a stint in prison after being wrongly accused and charged for murdering Matt's brother. 

H&A has been known for its short marriages in recent years (i.e. Nate and Ricki, VJ and Billie, Colby and Chelsea), so many of the broken engagements would have actually been short-lived marriages: Lance and Marilyn would have married before he ran off to join the army a few weeks later. Frank would have found out about Roo's baby after he said 'I do'. Phillip and Stacey would have married days before he was killed.

Gary Samuels death would have actually been a murder and several of the characters would have covered it up to avoid Carly going to prison. 

A few characters would have been trapped inside the burning General Store and in edge-of-your-seat drama, only escape at the last second. 

Villains like Danny Farnsworth and Dodge would have been even more creepier and evil - they were creepy enough, but I imagine if they targeting the 2021 cast, what we see on screen would be more explicit and dark.

 

[nenehcherry2]

 

Firstly, what a super fun thread. I love it! 

In general, would the likes of Celia behave as she did? I'm looking at this from an urban UK view, so, Aussie forum folks, please advise if the archaeetypal "local sticky beak" still exists to a realistic degree in rural New South Wales (or would she have been either older or reworked?). 

Can't imagine Roo rushing to marry Frank (or, with no pregnancy involved, Bobby with Frank, Carly with Ben, Bobby and Greg or Shane and Angel, etc etc for that matter). Average age of first marriage in Australia is now over 30, more couples cohabit in general without this obsession with marriage and there is far less taboo of a 16/17 year old being pregnant (and certainly marriage wouldn't have been a solution). Advances in DNA testing also would've made it silly for Roo to try and conceal the fatherhood in the first place.. 

Which leads to... Bobby doing an Ancestry DNA test to find out her real parents, with a lonely, curious Barbara coming up as a maternal aunt (to be fair, she was nagged into signing up by family historian, Celia, who is also a technophobe). Morag pushes Alf to concoct a story that Debra is the real mother (who had disappeared 18 years before leaving no trace). Bobby becomes obsessive, to no success, in finding Debra - leading to a Police search for her Murder (with questionable circumstantial evidence). Months later, Bobby's fatherhood comes out when she has a likely paternal Aunt match from Mary Croft. Donald confesses everything to a characteristically suspicious Ailsa (in earshot of local online troll, Alison Patterson) - including which Stewart sister he really slept with... 

Morag and Al given custodial sentences for the illegal adoption (and Bobby's "grandparents" charged with child neglect). 

Narelle as the local Tinder super swiper with Martin then Adam as the Tinder menaces! 

Ailsa's killing of her father coming to light when Bridget asks Emma to run a Google Lens image search of Ailsa's face combined with a photo aging app which has a positive link to a picture of her wedding to Alf on Carly Morris' Instagram account. 

Ailsa blackmailing the openly intersex Miss Molloy on one of her visits to the Fletchers to keep Shauna's identity a secret. Miss Molloy reminds her that it's only a matter of time before a curious Shauna is old enough to run an Ancestry DNA test and  connect with of one Ailsa's relatives. 

Allison Patterson as Summer Bay's nasty online troll, framing Roo for her actions and, eventually, outing Morag as Bobby's Mother and leading to a rift between Roo and Morag. Eventually, a common grammatical mistake in using "there" in place of "they're" or "their" (which would appear to be a common occrance with trolls) outs her. 

Danny would have later trolled Morag, initially framing Bobby. 

Alf and Celia being challenged on their unconscious bias of David Lee's relationship with "their Ruthie" (now that there is a lexical term for what Ailsa and Roo were accusing them of). 

Ben criminally charged with his emotional domestic abuse of Carly. 

Michael referring to David as "Perth's answer to Prince Andrew".

Andrew Foley, quite rightly, being picked up on his creepy style of interaction towards young women in general. 

Advances in communication technology, mobile phone ownership, social media etc means there would have been less of the three-episode long likes of trying to find Pippa for Sophie's labour etc. Nowadays, it would have been one PM from Bobby to Pip and she'd have been in the ward in minutes. Those kinds of stories which were built on the suspense of finding characters who had gone shopping in Yabbie Creek etc were a mainstay of the early years - and I find it very painful to watch them again now in light of world changes!

 

[nenehcherry2]

14 hours ago, adam436 said:

A few I can think of: 

Donald Fisher would have actually done a stint in prison after being wrongly accused and charged for murdering Matt's brother. 

H&A has been known for its short marriages in recent years (i.e. Nate and Ricki, VJ and Billie, Colby and Chelsea), so many of the broken engagements would have actually been short-lived marriages: Lance and Marilyn would have married before he ran off to join the army a few weeks later. Frank would have found out about Roo's baby after he said 'I do'. Phillip and Stacey would have married days before he was killed.

Gary Samuels death would have actually been a murder and several of the characters would have covered it up to avoid Carly going to prison. 

A few characters would have been trapped inside the burning General Store and in edge-of-your-seat drama, only escape at the last second. 

Villains like Danny Farnsworth and Dodge would have been even more creepier and evil - they were creepy enough, but I imagine if they targeting the 2021 cast, what we see on screen would be more explicit and dark.

 

Completely agree with all of these, especially Don going to jail. On remand, Bobby and Matt still would have found the evidence against Al to get him sent down but Don would have been kept in for concealing a manslaughter, albeit on a short sentence. 

As per my post, I think the marriage and engagement rate of the younger couples especially would have been much lower, period of cohabitation longer combined with higher divorce and abortion rates. 

Pippa probably would've still got with Michael quite quickly for the security aspect but not sure they'd have rushed to marry (and DOCS, no doubt, would have been okay with the fostering licence being shared by an unmarried couple). 

Would the general stores have all existed in the first place? Or would they have been parts of a chain (when the commercial world is now less "SME" based) or not even there at all? Would the likes of Alf have been the owner? Again, don't know the demographics of rural NSW very well but, here in the UK, it would be someone who looks more like my Father (!), even in a village, and probably part of a chain like Tesco Express or a franchisee of a "symbol group" like Cosco or Nisa. 

What would the ethno-cultural backgrounds of the Fletcher kids be? To avoid this becoming a cliché , I don't know enough about inner-city Sydney demographics to speculate, so help me out with that Aussies! 

[nenehcherry2]

Semi-closet pansexual Dodge obsessively hunting for Stevo on Grindr and wondering why Jeff Samuels ("rough top looking for twink gym buddies") is the only profile coming up in range? This story is then recycled a few years later with Simon and Blake. 

DOCS taking issue with Pippa's preferences in marrying men who wear questionably tightly fitted, denim shorts in the company of of minors. 

Sarah or Angel threatening to get Adam listed as a pervert for hanging around schoolgirls as young as 15.

Irene sending Selina to a sex addiction therapy group

Bobby wearing nice, modern checked shirts (not Hawaiian) with no Ailsa plane jumpers or ants dresses.

More pills and condoms on sale in the store (if that'd even exist)