Craig Barnett

[BobbyFridge]

Hello everyone, i hope you are all well. I have not posted on here for a long time now but recently i have been re-watching 1988 and i have just finished episode 228 and looking forward to 1989 and finally getting to see more of Morag, it feels like it takes a long time to get to the part of the series when she becomes a main character and the truth comes out about Bobby.

Anyway, towards the end of '88 Bob Barnett's son Craig appears in a dozen or so episodes as one of Jeff Samuels power pack boys, being trained hard and pushed to his limits. He sustains a leg injury thanks to Samuels and then he stays with Celia for a while and then with Tom and Pippa while his father is away. After this he disappears completely never to be seen again.

I quite liked him and would have liked to see him in more episodes. It occurred to me that there was a dark but believable way to have him as one of Tom and Pippa's foster kids. They could have had Bob being killed while during his duty as a policeman, after which Craig becomes one of the foster kids. This is the sort of storyline they could have done back then, it would have been powerful to see a kid lose his parent on screen and then go through the process of being fostered. A well respected member of the community being killed while performing their duties would have been powerful too. There was no mention of a mother at all unless i missed it, Bob was a single parent and Alf and Ailsa tried to match him up with Celia in earlier episodes.

[adam436]

The fostering element of the show was expanded as time went on - Fisher took in Viv, Alf and Ailsa took in Emma, Blake and Karen etc., so Craig could have even been fostered by Celia rather than the Fletchers. 

I liked Craig too and wouldn't have minded seeing more of him. It was good for Steven to have a male friend to bounce off of too - all his close relationships both with his foster siblings and his regular friendship group were all female. 

I liked Bob too. It was good to have a recurring policeman who wasn't a regular and he seemed believable for a small town cop. Did we ever find out what happened to him? I know he stopped appearing at some point in 1989 or so, but was he in theory policing the streets of Summer Bay for years later?